How Cryosurgery Is Performed On A Living Heart Poem by Patti Masterman

When someone you loved very much dies, strange things
Start to happen to you, that you don't notice right away:
The hologram that their influence built around you
Turns inside-out; the bulk of it shrinks down
Into one of those super-dense singularities.
Their belongings start to feel impersonal and oddly distant;
Reminiscent of a strangers bags, sitting packed for the departure.
All the love and caring is siphoned out
When the owner leaves existence behind:
The void they left fills with a surreal grace, when viewed
From the novelty of their absence. A breathtaking coldness
Accompanies this second ownerless half-life:
Touching them, your own fingers are burned, frostbitten
Eventually dead to external stimuli.
The rigor travels inward from the extremities,
Making a slow ascent toward the heart,
Crystallizing everything along the way,
Melding it all into lovely, singular geometries
As one cell after another is enveloped.
Until the central core is an unmoving artifact
In the arctic waste, but unable to die.
A frozen cryosurgical intervention of stained glass
Ruby veins, suspended in frozen calciferous walls.
Other people do not notice the changes or see
Not unless you touch them-
Accidentally brushing up against you,
They feel then the penetrating cold,
Radiating outward in bitter waves.
Drawing their clothing more tightly about them,
They search for the taletale signatures of frost,
Wondering if winter came early this year.