Gorgeous

Mickey Menzel

the surgeon calls me “gorgeous” as he gleefully beams

admiring his recent handiwork that was meant to refurbish, fix

the outside of my body,

my home.

but he wasn’t there at 3 a.m. in the hospital hallway

when I was screaming, trying to swallow the pain

and my father begged the nurses

who walked by with their eyes averted and their ears turned off

while I was on the stretcher in the

hall, neglected

for hours and hours.

months later my haunted house body is tied up

with a bow;

these scars are only visible to a trained or spying eye

inside

a relentless fire whips around

there are no hinges, bolts, screws

and the grisly howling picks up especially at night.

I am full of ghastly ghosts and trembling bones

which have been ripped off

and thrust around

the remnants of tissue that once were body parts

are strewn on the floor,

singed at the edges

black and sooty

big holes of missing pieces

chewed away by myself

or silently stolen at the hand of a

medical professional;

I did not consent for them to take my flesh.

the cold cold rain drips from the ceiling of my bones

I quake and think of that fire inside me

it is merely ebbing, not extinguished

and the surgeon says

Gorgeous

-Mickey Menzel is a graduate student from Ann Arbor, MI, pursuing a master’s in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from Pepperdine University.-