– the removal and cleaning of dead contaminated lacerated tissue or material

autolytic:
she was born when my arm dried up ghoul-like and fell off. pruned
without force and without infection. she rooted herself in soil and grew
deliberate, long, an offshoot all branches and hands. imagine her tongue
pulling between fingers. eyes bulging from bones on wrists. imagine a
bough bearing such slow and clinical pressure against it. gentle, gentle.

chemical:
and when I say she I mean medication. I mean pain. I mean enzymes,
amylase, lipase, I mean to say that she could intake and dissolve foreign
objects, that together we agreed her body instead of mine. do you see this
divorce? let us send it to her. let her body consume it. let us send the axe
to her.

mechanical:
we press a syringe into my phantom arm and decorate the wet-to-dry
dressings with images from revelation. change them and draw anew. with
each redress comes scraps of tissue lifted from the wound. a movement
so methodic and unconscious that the body keeps undergoing these little
removals. the exposed area blooms.

surgical:
I tell her I can stop living the bride if only I cut quick enough, hard enough,
saw deeply through this gleaming stripe of attachment. it is spring and
we are wet with decay. she peels fungus from my eyelids with her many-
jointed fingers. we are ripening for a future of disown.