The White Coat

                                             Picture: Google

I

A white coat
stares at me
as I reveal to light
the empty wardrobe,
its keep.

I stare back at it-
I stare until a
moth-like memory
begins to
devour my eyes.

II

Long ago,
they had said
that It was inside me.

So I had stabbed myself
one night,
clawed at a heart,
that had bobbed
like a dead bird
upon the breast of
a sea that snored
in slumber.

I had lifted a forkful of It
and sealed it
in the plastic of my eyes.
And then I had set
my hands to sewing the corpse-to-be.

Don't you call me a murderer!
I was a scavenger, perhaps,
a salvor.
Don't you chew on me,
you bastard!

Yes, yes, I will go on.

Then I had wiped clean this coat-
this that stares at me now,
and thrown it upon a hanger;
I had hung it until death.

Next, I had pumped air
into my patchwork
and set the body free,
free like a balloon in the sky.

III

It's all coming back to me now.
The coat is clean,
perfumed and indifferent.
The memory is mean,
persistent.