• she wakes up
• to the beeping of machines
• and an unfamiliar
• inhuman body
• and she screams
• shaking existence so hard
• it could burst at the seams.

//

• dozing
• in and out of reality
• her very prescence feels sickly
• and off

//

• there is something cruelly ironic
• about the tattoo she had before
• of a bolted on right arm
• where that scar used to be
• on her shoulder
• where now
• there is only flawless carbon plate

//

• the first time she meets that cruel scientist
• she snarls
• robotic voice modulating into a parody of vocal fry
• and she tells her Dr. Frankenstein
• you should have let me die.

//

• she doesn’t know how to operate her android body.
• she doesn’t know how to piece back together a lifetime of broken memories.
• she doesn’t know how to live anymore.

//

• she faced her death
• she remembers, long before
• and was fine with it.

//

• all stories come to an end.
• hers
• a long life full of suffering and surviving
• should
• have come to an end
• with that meaningful death she worked so hard to reach.

//

• how do you deal
• with a second lease on life
• when you never really wanted the first?

//

• and could you count this
• facsimile of living
• as worth anything?

//

• the nurse tells her that the world is softer now
• easier
• that the war so many fought was worth it
• and she can’t believe it
• because she paid the price for others to win
• and came back.
• what a cruel twist of fate.

//

• and now
• even more so than before
• she feels at war
• with her body
• an experimental prototype
• that was never meant to succeed
• much less allow the dead to keep living.

//

• she should have never marked “organ donor” on her driver’s license.

//

• and what she wants to do
• is lash out
• to let the anger and pain ripple through her new body
• and release into others
• the way she survived all those years ago.
• but the villains of the old world deserved it.
• the doctor and everyone else
• so pure and undirtied
• by the horrors of war and the old world
• don’t.

//

• what she hates the most
• is that this robotic frame
• she somehow manifests
• doesn’t fit nature
• it is too dystopian in design
• to fit this harmony
• of ancient mothers and gleaming cities
• that fusion of trees and skyscrapers
• that finally lets people thrive.

//

• and the nurse
• with her infinite patience and love
• that manifestation of motherliness
• that seemingly haunts her
• that she made a pact with so many years ago
• that allowed her to survive long enough to change the world
• takes her to a dog shelter.

//

• and she gets one
• that loves her
• that licks at her silicon skin like she belongs in this natural world
• that reminds her of being young and carefree again
• all those years ago
• before the scars of a dark world marred her mortal body.

//

• and she feels sad and joyous and anxious and fearful all at once
• anything other than that anger
• that followed her for years and years and years
• that kept her sharp in a rough world.

//

• and she asks the nurse
• that mortal manifestation of a gnostic goddess
• why

//

• “you deserve it.
• everything good
• in this new world
• you fought so hard to create.”