The Pygmy Giant

by Elin Lewis

I lost my eyes
the day I saw him,
greying on a bright metal table.
The image burnt through my corneas
until they were useful for nothing else
but maintaining the last, longest impression,
clung to my cells like a greasy cancer.
The first casualty.

I lost my feet
(they were the next to go)
unsteady in the stumbling darkness.
The last dance done.
The diaphanous way fogged up.
Which way now?

I lost my hands
clawing endlessly until they just
fell off. I almost expected them to keep going.
But no: tired, inhuman, unmoving.
No more reaching for me.

I lost my skin;
forgetting how it was to feel.
My insides poured out around me,
leaving trails that stank of emptiness.

I lost my head
(the last to go)
It swirled off into somewhere else:
the bottom of the black spiral stair.
If you walk down it far enough
there’s a room at the bottom,
cold and clinic-white;
the silent sleep.

My heart?
I lost it long ago.
It’s on that table now.

Elin Lewis is an avid reader and writer.