In Love with the Radiologist

I’m in love with her: my cold-blooded radiologist.

Only ten minutes have gone by since I met her. She

doesn’t smile. Instead, she scowls with impatience.

This woman must unveil too many secrets in this

profession. Before long, she places me in the fMRI

machine. I kidnap her up into it, dark, droning – her

idea of romantic music. I search to find her in here.

She has elusively slipped my grasp, and as I press

my eyelids shut, I look for my occipital

lobe – a place I think she hides.

Out there, her faint voice wanders in a space I

cannot define or set border to. Out there, this awful

woman rapes me from a control panel. She is a stranger –

unfeeling and aloof. She frightens me. Yet all I search

for within myself, is her. This notion is all my mind

consists of. Will I skew the results?

Can anyone see their fantasies before they move

into dark cortical regions? And have I forgotten

she can see my occipital lobe better than I? Can see

me the way I never have – the anterior to the posterior.

Will she see herself, naked in magnetic resonance?

She looks only for my faults – this sadistic woman.

Although I must admit...with precious care.

Dear Poem,

When I finish writing you, I always see

the dampened paper. Damp with blood. Not

the red of blood, but the cold of blood – blue

and black. So black are the letters, black like the

night when I close my eyes and you come back

to me. Every stanza, word and punctuation – sticks

and stones. I yearn for you to be stuck in flat white stone –

pinned to timelessness. When I finally fall sleep

you abandon me. All composure, all form.

Writing again and again, I am deserted

by your own hand pressed to mine, yet I love

you. All I have. Deep inside, I feel you laugh at

this. And this laughter I did not write.

Tonight, sleep easily takes me and I can’t

fight back, no. It’s that loss of blood again,

and regardless of this fatigue, my dreams are

empty because I gave them all to you.

When I awaken, I keep my eyes closed

because I’m tired of your assault, your clever

assault. You hide in-between objects and colours,

snorkel in feelings, shield yourself behind

music. My heart is so excited by even your

shadow, my veins can’t help but tire.

Poem. Where did you come from before I

created you? The mirror wrapped around my

heart? Or silver grinding soft reds?

In dimly lit isolation, shades of blue dance

with my own shadow sprawled over the walls.

As always, I hold a sharp razor, a razor you

like to call “blank paper.” Like a thousand

deaths, I slit my wrists. Once again I commit

myself to you. Spill black ink, spill.

The ink – eternal.

Sincerely,

a striving poet.