DISSOCIATION
Yasmine Azzi

It’s easy to forget, with my hands hard at work,
my brain visualizing the beautifully complex intricacies of nerves and arteries and veins,
that this body belonged to someone who was once alive.
Someone who was loved, someone who loved.
As I touch him, I think about all the lives he must have touched,
the regrets and mistakes he made, the people he made smile, the tears he once shed.
What were his dreams? Was he able to fulfill them?
Never have I felt so intimately present with another’s body.
But how could I feel so connected to someone who has died?
If ghosts exist, is he peering over my shoulder?
Does he know my name?
Is it painful to watch the integrity of your body be torn apart by strangers?
I wish I could thank him.
I also wish I could apologize.
Isn’t it cruel that in order to prevent death, we must intimately confront it?
Isn’t it sort of beautiful too