her hands are cold as milk, skin like rice paper.

she trembles with the slipping knife blade, trembles

with the sharp steel sea urchin spine of a needle, immobilized

like dead flesh in an aquarium, paralyzed

under cold green fluorescence. her eyes are holes, she plunges

the needle, sliding soundlessly into stagnant water,

drawn into glass chamber, peculiar silence of a vacuum.

a cowl of seaweed and lung tissue shelters her dormant body

like a chrysalis, and she dreams of immortal love -