My stomach is always the first part of me to feel the dread of betrayal –
Core of my being, nonpareil incubator for the rage, hurt, shame
The filth.

I peer through the lens of the microscope at the petri dish labeled HEK293T 6/29/24 p22 SBS.
Cells bask beside each other under the white light, cluster gregariously along the edge
Lie atop one another and exchange secrets.
Fully confluent, already 32-fold of their previous passage
They grow and they grow because it is all they know how to do.
Before the laminar flow hood, I spray my gloved hands with 70% EtOH to sterilize them
Particles hang in the air like unspoken words, the acrid scent lancing my nostrils –
Sterile, unfeeling
Clean.

Annotated anatomy textbooks and a curve-shattering immunology midterm score
Perfection personified: my pre-med boyfriend
And I, your first patient.
There is a stabbing ache between my legs and you ask if my stomach is okay.
Yes, I say, the problem isn’t about my stomach
But your touch grows ravenous and suddenly I am not so sure.
Splayed upon the examination table for you
You whisper, I like that I can do whatever I want to you.
I writhe silently underneath you and beg for a cure
Ibuprofen and Tylenol are the same thing, you insist, and I listen.

I wonder what kind of monstrosity will grow if I take a piece of my stomach and culture it: HSL1 7/4/24 p1 SBS
My stomach, wherein lies the sowed mistrust
Sludge of your sugar-coated fictions
Now reduced to meaningless decay –
The pathogens have been purged from my hands
But inside of me they fester.

At UCSF the doctor pries me open with her speculum like I am a clam. I am not meant to be out of water for this long and I can’t breathe
What’s wrong? she asks.
I am rotting inside, I confess between gasps.
You are perfectly healthy, she says, but she’s wrong. She chastises me for your carelessness. Your selfishness.
This is pretty common with women your age; if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have a job
Voracious desperation and futile pleas are no match for deaf minds and blind hearts.

It eats and it eats and it eats away at me
This seething black mass, its color bearing an uncanny semblance to the depraved voids in your eye sockets
Relentlessly greedy for every inch of me from the neck down.
It ebbs and swells, threatens to engulf me.
Enamel against epidermis, my ripe flesh stolen by your dancing jaws
And I am dirty, I am so dirty inside and I am dying
Beneath boiling rain I claw at the scars of your touch, praying to a god I don’t believe in
That one day I will see your sins trickle into the drain alongside my blood
But I never do
And still you are hungry.

Beloved sister and daughter is what my headstone will say –
Lover excised, our history erased.
I am crimson dripping down your chin and I know the mortician will have to find the right shade of concealer to mask your cobalt kisses on my broken body. I wonder how to tell them that they should use Merit concealer in the shade Linen.
I am someone’s daughter. I don’t know whether I am trying to convince you or myself.
No, you smile mirthlessly. You are my whore.
Your bloodied hands lay my virtue to rest.
Never far behind is your shadow, yet I grieve alone at her sloppy burial –
Eternally impure until death seizes my remainder.

More sweetly than you ever have, the bottle of ethanol murmurs my name.
Craven is surrender, yet all the more foolish it is to remain in this hell
So I give in –
Liquid sizzling as it denatures the secrets lodged in my esophagus
The chemical scorching my putrefied abdomen, burning against my spine
Every trace of you now vaporized to a ghost.
My tongue and throat alight in flames and my stomach a graveyard, I return to myself to find close to nothing left
But you are also gone.

And, finally,
I am clean.