Cadaver Laboratory In Use

It's more human than you want it to be

It doesn’t look how you’d think it would--
It’s better
It’s worse
It’s more human than you want it to be,
It’s less human than it should be.

A body bag
Is a body bag.
Whether it’s there to mourn or study
It’s more human than you want it to be.
I cried constantly.

A cried over the gift of their donated body
I cried over being too shocked to focus on learning from their body
I cried because one of the bodies
Was a woman of color
“This is rare,” our teacher told us
Because the medical system has treated women of color terribly, they don’t trust us, and rightfully so.
"We don’t often receive their bodies"
I cried over this woman trusting us with her body

Hands feet and heads will be covered
They told us
To minimize the humanity.
But it wasn’t covered in the way I wanted it to be
His feet were covered by socks
What’s more human than an old man wearing socks?
The old man was harder for me
He had chest hair, and it was more human than I wanted it to be

He reminded me of my father's open casket
The cadaver had a stick-and-poke tattoo
My father had a stick-and-poke tattoo
I could see moles all over his body
A buzzed beard peaking out of the head cover
It was more human than I wanted it to be

I stepped out to cry.
Removed my lab coat
To mourn these strangers
Blow my nose
Breathe air without death
And re-enter, a scientist

The skin isn’t what you’d expect it to be
It’s cold and hard of course--
But it looked like thick leather
Like wet jerky
It’s not as human as it should be
I deeply regretted my snack of choice being jerky
But they said the protein would help my dizzy

I cry as she shows us the man’s heartstrings
And teaches us that they can break
From emotional distress
“But your heart can also heal!” Philip interjects

I held hearts and brains and lungs and livers
And everything was so much more grey than it should be

Cause there’s no life in this body, only endings and pathology

Things were hard to distinguish
We dissected a penis.