Her phone rings when people die.
Typically not the elderly, kids on occasion.
Suicides are best. Motorcycle crashes too,
if they’re not too mangled.
I checked that box,
but she won’t come when I die
(friend-to-deceased conflict).
Maybe I’ll get her co-worker,
the one who fasted for a week
after scalpeling a triple-decker patty,
of bubbling marigold fat cells.
I imagined her working around them
like eating around too-thick butter frosting.
My friend scolds me when I call it harvesting.
The company she works for is slogan-less.
Entrust us to redistribute your leftovers.
Garnering Detritus since [insert founding year here].
You give a kidney, and you give a kidney!
I imagine her a gardener
washing dirt from lumpy vegetables.
The homegrown kind always ugly–
carrots split in two, miming legs,
always a nob suggesting manhood.
No, they don’t harvest those.
I’d like to winter in my skin,
seeing my organs into retirement.
Contrarily, like all desires, I want
my tissues/tendons/retinas to travel:
serve another human’s motivations,
learning movement
and a new shade of crimson.
Would my lungs miss the curvature of my cavity
or relish the different rhythm, brine on the breeze,
performing the in-and-out like a hobby rather than a job.
Would dying once scare my heart out of the ephemeral–
latching its fibers and veins to chest walls with such ferocity,
it grants the new owner immortality?
With my left hand I flick Morris code into my sternum. You in there,
tap-tap-tap, thanks for spending your naïve days with me.
First Published in Arthropod Journal, Issue 1, Summer 2021.
LINDS SANDERS 