TRAGIC Poem: CROSS/CONTAMINATION, by Cam Guillen

I. Sterile Field

The bodies don’t speak,
but they suggest.

Each morning,
I unwrap their silence
like a gift no one wants,
toe tag, chest split,
drain what dreams remain.

They smell of cooled iron,
of memory.
One still wore lipstick.
One still wept
from ducts that shouldn’t function.

I reach into cavities
with gloved grace,
plucking organs
like rosary beads.

Behind the mask,
I hum
not melody,
but rhythm,
to keep time
from folding inward.

They say we are sterile.
But the bodies remember.
They always do.
They follow home
on the undersides of fingernails,
in the breath I exhale
into my sleeping wife’s mouth.

II. Tupperware and Tendons

Dinner is overcooked,
chicken, dry,
sliced too neatly.
I stare at the cut
like it might twitch.

My wife says
her elbow hurts.
I imagine an incision
along the medial line,
just a peek
at what screams beneath.

The fridge hums
like a morgue drawer.
I reach for silverware
and touch only clamps.
My wife blinks.
She smells faintly
of antiseptic.

I clean the counter
in concentric circles.
A ritual.
A ward.

In the kitchen window,
my reflection is gowned,
gloved,
face shielded.

Behind me,
the hallway pulses,
soft light,
a tray of tools,
another case
to open.

III. Autopsy of a Living Room

The carpet is too red.
Too textured.
I kneel
and test for viscosity.

In the lamplight,
my coffee table reveals
its inner anatomy,
bone beneath varnish,
capillaries of splintered wood.

My wife lies on the couch,
half-asleep,
head tilted
at the perfect angle
of a post-mortem cranial block.

She doesn’t stir
when I whisper,
“Y-incision.”

There is a click.
The ceiling fan spins.
I don’t remember turning it on.
Its rhythm matches
a saw I haven’t used
since Tuesday.

Somewhere in the walls,
fluid moves,
not through pipes,
through veins.

I lay back on the floor.
The house breathes in.
So do I.

And finally,
we share a pulse