transplant by linda simoni-wastila

when the specialist arrived in his shiny white jacket and latex the room stilled, a sterile still life colder than the air used to keep the machinery blipping and bleating pushing red cells through my arteries, gushing antibiotics like city hydrants when summer swelters hot from the pavement into my veins, the frigidity keeping engines cool from shorts that would gum wires and tubes and send electric shocks down lifelines to the system, my system, and when he shook his head, a brief motion, his mouth a hyphen, the air grew colder yet and heaved my heart into a pulsing mass of valves and vessels, one last gasp before it puttered into a puddle of tissue necrotic and grey, of hope gone south with the geese

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