Dissection Of My Heart, Vol. 1

You're hovering over me, sterile scalpel balanced between steady fingers wrapped in sterile surgical latex to inhibit any infections. But what you want to cut out and what I want to keep in are the same thing, and much to my dismay you are the one also in control of the anesthetic. Confidently you tell me to count backwards from ten while you systematically and methodically prepare to open me up, as if you have done this a thousand times. But the drugs are faster than I am, and I can't tell you that I don't want to fucking count backwards, I want to scream that the part of me that you are trying to remove is you. What you think will be a simple procedure, I know is a death sentence. The last thing I hear is you telling me not to worry, everything will be just fine, once we have cured the malady of the broken heart. As often happens, the anesthetic is insufficiently doing its job, and I feel you make the first cut. Not a sharp pain, but more a dull ache, as you poke around trying to find the parts of me that displease you. I can hear your breathing intensify as you accidentally nick an artery, soaking your hands in blood. This is not going as planned! As I feel my body relax not into the mindless haze of the morphine drip but the completely cognizant thralls of a painless death, I think about the good intentions you had with that scalpel. I know, even as you desparately try in vain to repair the damage, that you only wanted to make a clean cut, remove the small piece of me that contained you, sew me up, and then drink to a speedy recovery. I'm not angry that once you were inside of me, you did not know what the hell you were doing in there. I love you in dying as I did in living, and even at the cost of my life, I allow you the experience of being inexperienced in these matters. I'm gone, yet part of me remains to marvel at the heroic effort you put into trying to save me, and the irony does not escape me. I simply hope that you sew me back up with that scalpel still inside of me, so it can never be used again on a different heart.