antiBODY
An Anthology of Poetry and Medicine Main Menu Foreword Introduction At the Teaching Hospital by Dan Kraines Atrophy by Paul Blom Barnacled to the Bone by Stephen C. Middleton Biopsy by Julie Rosenzweig Blood Truck by Sophie Summertown Grimes Choke by Alyson Miller Dead See Scroll by Rich Murphy Deciding Not to Wear Glasses by Donna J. Gelagotis Lee Discovery: Negative Return by Tara Skurtu Exile by Lane Falcon Flush by Stephen Mead Fruit By Tyler Chadwick Grandmother Dead, Then Alive, Then Dead Again by Matthew Baker Hysteria by Donna J. Gelagotis Lee If Not Absolution by Matthew Baker Lack by Sarah Anderson Wood Mirena by Meagan Grant Mittelschmerz by Sarah Kersey Moon Child by Lisa Hiton pecan, rodef, clam by Susan Comninos Refugees by Walt Peterson She Cannot Let Him Go by Nancy Smiler Levinson Some Days Begin Like This by Tara Skurtu The Needle by Isla McKetta There Was Beauty in That Graph by Geralyn Pinto [Untitled] by Nan Darbous Marthaller [Untitled] by Nan Darbous Marthaller Contributors

The Mechanics of Love

18022
by Victoria Gatehouse



It ticks me to sleep,
the titanium valve in your heart,
 
so close, my lips could press
a gleam down the horizontal scar
 
where they opened you up,
hooked cannulised veins
 
to the heart-lung machine.
This room of ours, all soft
 
darkness until a car passes;
in the place where curtains
 
don’t quite meet, a spill
of light, making me think
 
of that imperfect seal,
how blood streaked back
 
from ventricle to atrium,
more turbulent with every year.
 
Now, the deep red
chambers of your heart, secured
 
against the leak and tonight,
every night, in that pause
 
between beats –
titanium, titanium,
 
for its strength, durability,
its resistance to corrosion,
 
for this love, for those two
shining leaflets
 
clicking in their frame,
hinging on it.
 

 

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