she says she “felt the muscles tear
from the bone” when she
reached inside me, but, how do they
know i “lost one litre of blood”?

like, do they just eyeball
the red puddling on the bed there?
am i left visibly drier? like a muddy
riverbed fish flapping in the silt?

“trauma”, they keep saying: “trauma”
but a tear sounds too neat, too surface,
so superficial, and doesn’t seem to justify
this digging around in my spine

for forty minutes so far; nerve ends
aflame down my jelly legs.