a dense sample—and he smuggles it back

to the States in an empty bottle,

wraps it in a sock, buries it in his suitcase.

There is no other way to know,

though he has suspicions,

sends it off to a lab in his city

to be stained, magnified,

examined between glass slides

beneath a microscope.

The word pathology

derives from the Greek

for the study of pain and suffering.

This desire to help others

is a kind of knowledge—

translational here, it moves

between the work of research

and the practice of medicine.

Clinical nature and site noted:

Left posterior mandible.

Eleven slides: cell nuclei stained

blue, cytoplasmic parts pink.

The body, rendered in contrast,

abstract art. Peripheral cells

cuboid to columnar, tumor islands

exhibiting hyper-cellularity,

depicting mitotic figures

and sequestrum (dead bone).