10-Visible Man

To open, I press upon a seam, mar him in my own image—

crooked pinky, a scar where the spaniel tore at flesh.

Deboned of an insistent rib, the visible man claims primogeniture.

Here is body revealed in stark intimacy

to love’s flensing knife: liver plucked each day, fat in the eternal fire

then night’s burial, a recrudescence, tiny viscera reminding me of miracles.

The body open: a glass flower.

At night, floating on his breath, I think of this precursor,

soft mechanics of a vessel singular, complete.