i could have been a field medic, you suggested, with my gentle touch running down the thin skin of your spinal notches. i bite my nails but i still could pinch glass out of your pores and press my hand so red would fill my palm lines. the version of i, completed with you, is a war vet’s firework dream of what grandeur really is. you’d talk of lactating with your closed wounds, we’d retire to a wheat farm, and i’d plant your stomach into the garden. maybe the baby’s blood cells pump forsythia. our favorite, but really, yours.
i could still be a field medic, you suggest, but not the only one. i’d stitch slits when, if ever, rain comes down on bare you planted & abandoned in the flower bed. you’d still lactate, just wouldn’t bleed. and the planted baby would know me as a father or a gardener but i’ll only ever be a medic. the statue i once was, imperfections cleared, is crushed marble on a mausoleum floor. medic can’t recover with no bones to heal.