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We cannot see it in your smile, so we must

go deeper, black air and white blood, name,

date of birth, MRN, all that you have

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not chosen. Beneath your rind 

of skin, your abdomen is nicely marbled,

and as we scroll up, your diaphragm dissolves

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like a lozenge on the tongue. But here now

is your white heart no lover has ever truly seen,

plainly before us now in the light, held

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in a memory of stillness, and in its mystery perfect.

Your feelings have been subtracted, but what matters 

here is whether a part of you has grown enough

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to cast a shadow. We have photographed it for you.

It takes years to distinguish it from what belongs. Strange, isn't it,

how little the image resembles the idea of you, how little it is

that our innards know of us.