Gass Chamber

the bones are the first to know, they hum a low dirge, like a bass line in a dying bar, deep under the skin’s slow retreat. blood stumbles in the corridors, loses its way in the veins, tries to remember where it used to go. the heart? it forgets the beat, like a drunk forgetting the name of the woman he once begged for. lungs collapse like cheap umbrellas, breath rattles in like pennies in a tin cup— a wheeze, a whisper, then nothing but a waiting room silence. and the soul, if there is one, it slips out the back like it owes them all back rent.