First, the muscles slacken,
flattening the slopes of the biceps

into valleys, jimmying open the jaw
for anything to crawl in or out with ease.

The eyelids flutter freely.
Flightless birds, we say to ourselves

in our inside voices. Blueberries,
we say, looking at the lifeless lips.

The liver, as it fails, spills over,
a twitching balloon collapsed

against a bed of sternum the skin
stresses the sculptural elegance of

as it tightens around the bone.
The kidneys whistle. The stomach honks.

It is a matter of fact. The lungs crash
hours before the heart, the fibers purpling

into plum-like portents of disaster,
clogging the airway with clots.

Hunched over like a gorilla,
a cell coughs up a cell.

The brain, shrouded in chemicals,
remembers a tongue, a carousel,

a few gravestones, the endless
salt flats choked with shadow.

The thinking is otherwise
unexceptional. The soul is yellow.