Inside Outside

I held a human heart in hand,
and it was cold
and mine beat faster.
I traced the tiny veins and arteries, in baby blue and soft pink
and thought how once this made a man exist
and how some day my own heart would be plasticized and dark
like a frozen mass, nothing more, 
in someone’s fingers.
I thought how one day I might be dust.
What should have felt beautiful, interstellar,
the push of life held in my palm,
instead felt nauseating.
It was heavier than I expected
and complicated, and visceral,
and dead
just a dead thing I could peel apart.
One day, every life becomes this
a contrast between the fast-beating and the still and handled
a shadow, formaldehyde, and cold weight.
He had thoughts, ideas, emotions, tan skin, fevers, sex, bad days, purposes
and now he is yellow and covered and dissected and an object,
a method.
He is science.
His muscles are shiny, his lungs grey
the heart in my hand the last tie to humanity
and motionless,
exactly what we all become.