I am a heartless person

No cochineal muscle thumps beneath my hollowed ribs

No burning lava trickles through my thin vessels

No transparent air molecule enters my ailing lungs

None

She reminds me

that if I am alive

I must possess a heart

Some mortal engine must churn for me to breathe, speak, and blink

But alas I am a heartless person.

I am a handless person

No dexterous fingers attached to my opaque cartilage

No pliant palm cradles my wizened cheeks

No frozen knuckles heave my diaphanous tendons

None

She explains to me

that if I am alive

I must own limbs

Some fleshly organ must motion for me to touch, feel, and embrace

But alas I am a handless person.

I am a memoryless person

I lost the fundamental ability to reminisce

at a doorway made of my mother’s flesh

I do not remember - I cannot recall

Not at all

She tells me

that if I am alive

I must retain memories

Some ephemeral sensation of a silken zephyr must prompt me to smile, laugh, and dream

But alas I am a memoryless person.

I show her

My decaying, ashen heart that cannot beat

My frail, sickly hand that cannot touch

My barren, harrowed memory that cannot feel

while

Her crimson apparatus siphons heaven into her body

Her sensors detail caresses to her tender appendage

Her scintillating gray matter carries rosy cloudless mornings to her cerebrum

She is not a heartless person

But I am.