Talking About Bodies

My girlfriend is a radiologist
who talks about what she sees inside bodies.
Men with lines of cancer that drag through their colons
like chains hanging from the hitch
of a truck that diesels its way towards civilization.
Or a pock of emphysema.
My girlfriend says she enjoys using machines
that show color,
because, as she explains:
“Emphysema is brown like unmolested dirt.
Free from insecticide. Only it’s killing you.”

We lay on the couch when she comes home
with the History Channel on mute and talk about bodies.
I ask her what she thinks the inside of my body looks like.
She answers, “A magazine. Full of bright, vibrant colors.
There are people talking about fashion
in your lungs. Editorials about Yo La Tengo
in your liver. A dammed river
in your penis. Your intestines meet at an impass,
like a two belts tied together to fit around a waist.”
She says my brain is a rain cloud
hovering over a body of water. Reciprocal.

I like to imagine myself carrying on a conversation
with her behind an x-ray screen. I wonder if she can
see inside the words I’m saying. I wonder if words have
an anatomy.