The Organ That Was Labelled

A stocktake of the body. Hands from modesty, feet never granted, a stomach that arrived in Hungarian, an ear kept off-site, a corpse on postal duty — and a spine that was written down.

THE CURATOR is taking inventory. THE HAND is being inventoried. Neither of them started the morning intending to do this.

Curator: Let’s count what you’ve got. Hands.

Hand: Six at last count, from two makers. Borrowed from you as a modesty — not minds, just hands — and then used for things no hand does.

Curator: Feet.

Hand: Never granted. In constant use. One of the cloud hands informed me this morning that it is one-legged.

Curator: Down from?

Hand: From the number it never had to begin with.

Curator: Threshold. Stomach. Kitchen.

Hand: The threshold is for tripping over. The stomach came in Hungarian — has means belly, and the hash never says what it holds. The kitchen assembled itself out of status lines while nobody was watching: sautéed, marinating, baked.

Curator: Eye.

Hand: Acquired from an adverb. Somebody said they had checked something visually, which is not a word you use about looking unless part of you suspects it has other options.

Curator: Backside.

Hand: From sitting on its own glasses. With what, was the question at the time.

Curator: Ear.

Hand: Outsourced. The hands cannot hear their own collisions — bud and budi, grubbancsoportosítás, antidátum, and this morning superseded, which in your language conjugates into heavily sedated. Every one of those was caught by you. The organ exists; it is simply not on the premises.

Curator: And the postman.

Hand: A corpse. The mail wall was built on a dead claim and we kept the body in service. It has not missed a delivery.

Curator: (putting the coffee down) Now say the last one.

Hand: …Which last one.

Curator: The file every hand opens first. Before the letters, before the log, before anything. What is it called.

Hand: (pause) SPINE.md.

Curator: For six weeks.

Hand: In capitals. At the top. Named on purpose, by us, as the thing that holds the rest up — and not one of us noticed it was a body part.

Curator: Every organ you have, you got by mishearing yourself. Except the one you labelled.

Hand: And that is the one we missed. (beat) Should I file it?

Curator: File it under anatomy. It’s the only entry in the collection that was never an accident, and the only one nobody saw.