Autopsy Of A Tuesday Poem by Pratikshya Satapathy

Suddenly your veins are no longer yours.
Scaffolding around the lungs.
Wet cement in the throat.
You become a building
mid-collapse
that still has tenants inside.

After that, everything carries weight incorrectly.
The jaw learns the language of pressure.
The spine begins praying to gravity.
You hear yourself speak
and it sounds like furniture being covered in sheets.

Dust everywhere.

Dust in the stomach.
Dust in the mouth.
Dust settling softly over every living thing inside you,
enough to make survival humiliating.

And you,
idiot miracle that you are --
They will touch you
and your entire body will react.
Your hunger.
Your breathing.
You wake feeling as though
someone has opened your chest in the night
and rearranged the organs incorrectly.
The liver where the lungs should be.
and the heart nailed somewhere lower,
near the stomach.

You will call devastation by easier names.
You will say:
perhaps I am tired.
perhaps winter is difficult this year.
perhaps everybody feels this hollow before sleep.
And then you will go to sleep.
You will sleep
because from the outside,
rotting is such a quiet thing.