How Cryosurgery is Performed on a Living Heart

When someone you loved very much dies, strange things
Start to happen to you, that you don't notice right away:
The hologram that their influence built around you
Turns inside-out; the bulk of it shrinks down
Into one of those super-dense singularities.
Their belongings start to feel impersonal and oddly distant;
Reminiscent of a strangers bags, sitting packed for the departure.
All the love and caring is siphoned out
When the owner leaves existence behind:
The void they left fills with a surreal grace, when viewed
From the novelty of their absence. A breathtaking coldness
Accompanies this second ownerless half-life:
Touching them, your own fingers are burned, frostbitten
Eventually dead to external stimuli.
The rigor travels inward from the extremities,
Making a slow ascent toward the heart,
Crystallizing everything along the way,
Melding it all into lovely, singular geometries
As one cell after another is enveloped.
Until the central core is an unmoving artifact
In the arctic waste, but unable to die.
A frozen cryosurgical intervention of stained glass
Ruby veins, suspended in frozen calciferous walls.
Other people do not notice the changes or see
Not unless you touch them-
Accidentally brushing up against you,
They feel then the penetrating cold,
Radiating outward in bitter waves.
Drawing their clothing more tightly about them,
They search for the taletale signatures of frost,
Wondering if winter came early this year.

Published May 22, 2010 Write a comment
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Frank James Ryan Jr./FjR
Absolutely stunning work Hetty...Lucky me, that i logged on when i did...Cannot believe this work is not paged over with comments...It seems that there is no "in-general" good posting time on this site...and some of our best work gets passed by like thoe 2 ships crossing in the night cliche....And then we get disgusted...shoot off some 2 minute diction-spasm,and BAM! Suddenly,22 peeps are going with you being the best thing since sliced bread cliche!...I HATE CLICHE's ! Love this prosaic above...as it is brimming over with every poetic element that clearly spells out "QUALITY"! Sumo-creative storyline...resplendent imagework & structural movement that waltzes throughout!~FjR~
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