what I couldn't hear

I wake to the sense of an organ missing. Somewhere below my lungs. Above my large intestine.

Between wake and sleep, I think I’m back in a booster seat. My mother is giving me something thick and repulsive to glug, making the world melt into a stickiness that seals my lashes shut.

Beside me, he smells faintly of bleach.

It makes me think about when the sun turned white and violent at noon. When the wind hit against a hospital window and I was hidden behind it — above everyone else.

The cranes outside murmured to each other. I boasted to them how important I was.

*

I increase the shower’s temperature.

A thumb presses against the scar just below my hip — the one I can see if I turn at an awkward angle before a mirror.

I thought it was my thumb. He pressed harder; I shivered. The corner of his lip lifted.

Only the remnants of water on my skin. And the ghost of his thumb. I can smell my flesh burning in my head.

I remind him to be gentle, that he is not a butcher.

I wondered if, as a child, it was true: my mother would have loved me more if there was less of me.

I wondered if all he heard was the tone I used.

*

When I first met him, it had been silent for a long time. I noticed a thermometer and tongue depressors on the worktop.

He took out his stethoscope.

My jumper dulled the sound, and he asked me to lift it so as to better hear my lungs. The metal had no time to decide between whether to freeze or to burn, so it remained white. His voice was close. He inhaled idly. “Take a deep breath in.” The sound lingered. “And out…” He exhaled.

His eyes fixed on my skin blistering beneath the metal. But he wasn’t really looking there. He was quietly listening to what I couldn’t hear.