Blood Poem No. 1

A bone marrow biopsy is like

Ice from the bottom of a Starbucks cup

crunching between your teeth and then

swallowed.

The brain freeze in your leg not your head

It's like

A garden tool digging for weed roots

and then it hits

a rock

Scraping the tops and sides of it, resurfacing with dirt crumbs that

make your eyes water.

(They're just watering, I'm not crying).

It's like a DJ scratching a record

Bow chicka bow bow boom.

It sounds like nothing you've ever heard before but like everything you've ever known.

It's like a refrigerator crisper drawer.

That room is so cold. Why?

Metal shelves and white walls. I am

the produce on the table. Kale with its stems cut. An onion peeled. An avocado smashed.

The pressure was immense, he said. She was really bearing down.

Her name was Lissa, just like my sister.

It takes a lot to penetrate a bone, extract some marrow. My bones the mineral mines where I grew up, her extraction tools the miner's silver picks. My marrow a precious metal.

Maybe that's where

the soul resides.

The marrow. Not the heart.