Bodies Don’t Grow Back

Bodies Don’t Grow Back

Mar 19

Written By Morgan Coates

I was promised resurrection.

Everything grows back stronger,

I thought. Like tooth and nail,

Hair or salamander tails, I imagined

Graveyards back to life

Veins slithering over skin like Virginia creeper

Cobwebs of capillaries

Green growing over bodies like grass or mold

Carnations blooming from the carnage

Something made alive again

Everything grows wings,

I thought. Like butterflies

Tearing their cocoons. I pictured

Vertebrae piercing through wrinkled folds

Ghostly faces howling at the full moon

The dead learn to fly,

I thought.

Everything grows back stronger,

The children chanted

As they pulled baby teeth from skulls,

Spilled blood on the brush

Of schoolyards and pocketed

These pieces of themselves

This body will grow back,

I whispered, as I cleaved

My leg clean off, slashed

Through blistering skin, see-sawed

To the bone, cartilage tumbling

Away like skipping stones

This body will grow back,

I whispered, as I planted a rotting limb

Under my pillow like the teeth fairies or angels

Run away with

I thought, who could ever tell

Teeth from toes

Toes from bones

Limb from limb

If they’re covered in blood?

This body will grow back stronger,

I thought. Like the boreal forests that are burned down

On purpose. I stared down

At my stump

Look! My younger self says. Look!