My cadavers in lab are not the only autopsy I’ve been performing
In this year since I’ve been free of you
In this year you’ve made a fool of me
For believing so wholly
In a future that depended on anything outside myself.

I take apart my patient and peer into what feels like my own heart
Trying to make sense of the connections
Trying to understand where anything fits in
When what I am looking it seems empty, drained long ago
Pooled into a somber puddle I’d drown in, literally behind me,
If not for the drainage vents, or lacrimal glands, installed for said overflow.

“We are dried out and lifeless together,” I think, forcing grim humor to compensate for the horrors of the visions I now see three times a week. “We know what it’s like to have a heart that doesn’t work anymore.” Maybe one of my classmates will be able to understand it better than me. I’m kidding—but don’t worry, this is why I’m in therapy.

In the end and like in medicine, I must come to accept
That there are things in life you can’t make sense of
There are things in life you must try to treat, without knowing the pathology
Without understanding what went wrong, truly
No matter how frustrating that may be.

The compromises that seemed so hard,
Seemed like pulling teeth, seemed so grinding, and difficult
Were quickly then made mandatory, dissolved in Zero
Zero, time together on the phone,
Zero visits to each other throughout our busy year
Zero balance between us to balance, as one grabbed or took slack.
For a situation that seemed so complicated you went ahead and made it simple—
There won’t be anything that needs sorting out—
There won’t be anything, of us, period.

So thank you, I guess, for teaching the natural conclusion;
Despite it feeling like I mimic, my now cardiac-lack friend,
The only heart that’s truly missing in the equation was yours
And mine, just hidden in the shadow from all the bruises,
Just has to learn to heal.