Bypass
by Susan Kelly-DeWitt
Pudding House Publications.
When they cracked open your chest, parting
the flesh at the sternum and sawing
right through your ribs, we'd been married
only five weeks. I had not yet kissed
into memory those places they raided
to save your life. I could only wait
outside, in the public lobby
of private nightmares
while they pried you apart, stopped
your heart's beating, and iced you
down. For seven hours a machine
breathed for you, in and out. God,
seeing you naked in ICU minutes
after the surgery ... your torso swabbed
a hideous antiseptic yellow
around a raw black ladder of stitches
and dried blood. Still unconscious,
you did the death rattle on the gurney.
"His body is trying to warm itself up,"
they explained, to comfort me.
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