Candor Mortis

My autopsy room is a confessional, where killers in absentia divulge their sins through bodies rigid and frigid, mutilated and mute. Graffiti of abrasions, contusions and lacerations reenact without deceit or reservations a catalogue of perversions and violations. Rage, hatred, greed, jealousy, sickness explode and leave behind vandalized anatomies, a *********** of naked emotions in the topography of vacated husks. Silently, they talk. With my eyes, I listen. They confide in me about themselves too, these chatty cadavers, about their public faces and private hell. Tattoos speak of loves and obsessions, silicone breasts betray insecurities, medications reveal internal insurgencies, needle marks give away muffled screams, cirrhosis lets on alcoholic dreams. A hundred foibles preserved by the candor of rigor mortis, each corpse an abridged, unfinished biography. By the end of their final confessions, the departed have parted with their burdens of secrets. In death much more than in life, there is honesty. Still, I take comfort in the lies of the living.