THE PATHOLOGIST'S WIFE

Here in my kitchen, preparing the chicken for dinner
- clearing the body cavity of giblets - my thoughts
are with my husband in his autopsy room,
where he's carefully dissecting the recently deceased.

Back home, he will recount vividly the gory details:
the deconstruction, the blood - diminishing my appetite,
while he dines with ravenous gusto!

I picture him in his green scrubs and latex gloves,
handling his scalpel with deft precision
as he carves and excises with cold detachment.

I, too, will slice into the chicken's dead flesh
through skin and muscle to bone,
until nausea characteristically overcomes me.
In all but this, our occupations are similarly matched.

But from then on, the similarity ends: his subject
died from a stroke, whereas mine was intentionally slaughtered.
Blades carve them both, but the Soul consequences differ.
His conscience is clear, but can the same be said of mine?


The roasted chicken is steaming on the table -
it somehow reminds me of a stillborn baby...
and Karma descends heavily on my head.