His Right Leg

A ticket pinned to the thigh reserves it, the whole cadaver is parceled off - of course. Legs are a late harvest, these often-indigent parts carry a visual poverty long after the body is plucked. Under watchful eyes the young medics separate muscle groups, filter large blood vessels from fibrous runnels, hesitant scalpels seek out fascial planes. The leg is devolving to scraps, yet, ingrained in the tissue I sense residual shades of a former life, seaside postcards, old photographs, perhaps campaign ribbons, odd tokens amongst yellowed newspaper clippings, all briefly surface as conjectured images beneath a probing knife. The gray flesh retains its personal history, I imagine that behind the knee there is a wife, children, and a separation all spectrally etched between femur and tibia. Much of the ensuing bone-whittling years are demonstratively scored across a formaldehyde and jelled narration. The students suppose they dissect a limb, while I notion that I turn over bloodless pages, of an unwritten story, and now the last few attached ligaments remain as threads that speak at last of a long journey’s end.