Exhibit A

When the reserves ran dry,
Moyjer said,
you deserve to live like poor people.

She said it plainly:
no tone carrying the cruelty,
just words landing in a body
with poison
that cannot be expelled,
seeping through tissue, through chambers,
sliding into organs that never consented.

Fifty eight years.
Every organ bore the sentence, layered it, accumulated it,
until the body itself became the witness.

Moyjer said,
you are no longer useful to me.
Think of me, she said, even as you fall apart,
and bring me sustenance shaped from your collapse.

The heart tightened.
The heart did not recover.
The lungs shortened their reach.
The kidneys held what should have been released,
blood passing through like an unpaid debt.
The muscles froze mid command.
Every system faltered, trembled, gave out.
Every fiber became evidence.

It became Exhibit A.

Pain braided through nerves and marrow,
quiet, methodical,
charging interest.
I paid in blood,
breath,
pulses,
and poison.

I kept begging you not to make you dead to me.
I kept begging you not to make you dead to me.

Fifty eight years of carrying expectation.
Fifty eight years of being held and thrown.
Fifty eight years of learning to survive,
when care was conditional,
when love had a ledger.

The poison returned, layer upon layer,
cumulative, insistent, undeniable.
Every flare repeated her sentence.
Every collapse echoed it.

I kept begging you not to make you dead to me.
I kept begging you not to make you dead to me.

Heart: tighten, remember, beat anyway.
Lungs: ration, ration, ration.
Kidneys: hold, filter, conserve.
Muscles: freeze, obey, endure.
Pain: compound, thread, mark, remain.

Fifty eight years.
Fifty eight years.
Fifty eight years.

Usefulness revoked.
Not loudly, not angrily.
Just the measure of me as a slot to fill.

The body held the truth.
It became Exhibit A.
The heart did not recover.
The poison lingered.
Residue built upon residue.

I kept begging you not to make you dead to me.
I kept begging you not to make you dead to me.

And still, still, I am here,
threadbare,
tapestry unraveled,
at the edge of survival.

Every organ grasping,
every pulse echoing,
every breath marking the record.

Counting,
bearing,
living Exhibit A.

Fifty eight years.
I kept begging you not to make you dead to me.
Fifty eight years.
I kept begging you not to make you dead to me.
Fifty eight years.
I kept begging you not to make you dead to me.
Fifty eight years.
I kept begging you not to make you dead to me.