These Things I Do Not Know

I have tucked and taped back my nature
and you’ve together your tender lips sewn.

We’ve plucked out our eyes,
and popped them like small bulbs.
Though once as pearls in the beauty they held,
they’re discarded like empty orange shells.

What’s more! We’ve severed our fingers
and buried them away,
So that we might not grace each other’s features,
nor undo the surgical sterility –
the precision with which
we’ve on one another operated.

But what of these buried pieces?
Will they like leaves pulled from the limb
wither and die?
Decompose to whence they sprang
and leave but fossilized prints behind?

Or like seeds, do they teem with life?
Take root! demand and conquer ground?
Do they wait for water
or tender care to sprout?
Or would they be as mandrakes,
together, twisted, alone?