103

Weakness blossomed in her extremities, first presenting in her hands and arms an aftermath. She saw herself lose all power over the limbs. On her back perfectly helpless, she seems a skeleton. She saw herself. The strangeness. Every muscle in the body is wasted. Those of the back share in the general atrophy, which, however, is perhaps most florid in the muscles of the hands and arms. Though every muscle in the body is wasted. The fingers are flexed in the characteristic griffin's-claw gesture, the flexion being not of the metacarpo-phalangeal joints but of the phalangeal. The while the hand commands, the interossei seem to have entirely disappeared, so that the finger and thumb of an observer can be made to meet between the metacarpal bones. If the observer pleases? Thank you. The long bones of the arm can be watched throughout their entire length as distinctly as though covered only by integument. The legs and feet are in a very similar condition. They, also, can be watched. So wasted are the abdominal muscles that the spine can be distinctly felt throughout the lumbar region. Too long now you've finished.

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113

Being
                  opposed to this process of
decomposing,
                  the thumb let the hand know
it had enough
                                    of the eye's preoccupation
with the gelatinizing of the flesh
                  and took up a knife
and began to cut into
                  a pomegranate
                                    with the thick red skin
of a red dwarf star
                  and laughed itself
                                    sick
at those supposedly
                  invisible lips
                                    plumping
up on
                  the taste
of the unfinished