the rat is belly-up in my hands. breathing is hard due to the plastic vat of formaldehyde-drenched vermin on the desk next to me.
seeing guts open on the table is reminiscent of lying skinless on my heavy bed, organs wet and bloodless inside my body cavity.
combing through the rat, i find i'm peeling back my own painless ribcage, tasting defeat in my own clawed fingers.
it's like selling the fur off my body for the sake of extra credit points, tossing my own torn-up skeleton
into landfill, flopped belly-up below blue plastic gloves and bits of my own drained flesh.
seeing the divide between gory body and vague fishbowl conscience is so much
stickier than i ever would have imagined;
my arms are covered in it,
the ends of my hair drip
with stomach acid. the bisection
of my own blue heart exists tangible in my live shaky hands,
the coil of my intestines curled helpless
in my poxy palms.
how ugly, to dissect for commodity! how ugly, to dissect for the sake of distance, the sake of false superiority over animals that twitch!
how strange to rip my own body open, how repulsive to lie suffering under the cast of my own disease-ridden hands!