Hell begins with paperwork, a shaved groin, and iodoform blooms.
The Devil wears a surgical mask, speaks in anagrams points to the shadows on the screen, how he will remove your colon, shorten it to a J-pouch.
He carves hell into you, threads his scalpel through the shit, calls it a gift.
When you awaken, you feel your torso contracting, screaming mutely for its missing part— a pain greater than the morphine drip.
You will be fed through your chemo port, watch colostomy bag after colostomy bag being replaced for the next four days, until your body adjusts, can eat solid foods, defecate properly again.
Bowel movements will replace the hours, healing scars the months.
Your wife will cook you casseroles you can not eat, just yet. For now, each syllable of her love is a soft velvet leash. Everything reminds you of your dead mother and you fear you will die the same painful way.
Your wife will continue to water the plants, speak gently to you. She knows hell has followed you home and this exorcism ritual of hers will take a long time.
In the end you will weep when you learn the devil she removed has housed its child’s Cancer in her.
You watch her go through the hell you just left.
You keep the curtain’s drawn afraid to turn around, look at her, less she disappears.
She bargained with the devil to save you, and now it's your turn to return the favor.
You turn around, let out a breath— she's still there.
You press your fingers to the place they cut you, draw a heart around the scars— realize you do not need to be whole to be sovereign- as you do the same on her stomach, leaving muddy prints.
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