THE SCIENTIST

I didn’t know you then,
that summer when I sat in the dark
with the confocal microscope
and watched the stage light up with cells,
when I autoclaved the instruments
and brought in the mouse hearts
on a silver tray to examine and dissect,
when I weighed the lungs, the liver, and the spleen
in the balance of my hands
with the salt that would preserve them,
or produced the jars of formalin
where they would float, small and sacrosanct
as the finger of a saint
or the baby in the freak show.
O my love, had I known you then,
what could I have said
to prove to you the beauty of my work?
What would you have done
if the jars cracked in your hands?
Had you known me then, you said,
you would have broken them yourself.