Descend

Driek Zirinsky

I sign the permissions, hand my life over to strangers. I kiss you goodbye, take the elevator down to the operating assembly line, the door closes with a hiss.

Down there I weigh in and strip of everything I brought with me, even my wedding ring as if I am being born in reverse, a naked thing without a mother to comfort me.

I am laid out on my gurney inside a curtained cubicle and hear urgent voices, the squeak of rubber soles on linoleum, the tear of another curtain. They are next.

The nurse tells me her name, struggles to ind a good vein for the iv. Already I am bloodless, a spirit thing trailing lines of tubes so I will not get lost.

The surgeon rips my curtain back. He wears a dark suit, like a movie star. He says it’s a long wait today, they are behind schedule. He marks the site with a Sharpie. If anything is a mistake, it will not be that.

My four escorts wheel me to the holding area. I am now the chosen. The man in blue marks my spine my body is covered with black markings, a map or an eloquent spider’s web.

Then the OR, green ghostly igures swim about preparing for me, inject luids to make me relax. In my dream the clang of metal hammering, a miasma of voices.

I wake up somewhere else, Holly the nurse pulls me up, her hand a branch back to the living world. The surgeon in his dark suit sends me upstairs to a warm room where you wait