A retired engineer orders a 3D printer,
which arrives in a ponderous wooden crate,
stretching eight feet upward.
On the floor of the crate, half covered
in sawdust, is an envelope
that reads: To whom it may concern.
Inside is a red & gold ouroboros.
He spends days learning G-code,
sees three-dimensional coordinates in his dreams.
G1 X10 Y33: infrapatellar fat pad (right)
G45 X60 Y10: skin behind the earlobe (left)
He used to have a wife.
She liked rhubarb kombucha & mood rings.
Like everything ephemeral,
she returned to her constituent parts.
She was the only person he knew
who rescued honeybees
from swimming pools, who wondered
at their fine wings drying in the sun.
She had a larger-than-normal
appendicitis scar, a toe
that doubled over in her shoe.
He even made a joke of it, at the end,
said, I won’t find another girl
with a toe like that.
How they strained to laugh.
How she hardened her face
& said, Try.
& he did.
& there are glimpses of happiness,
building & learning
between the nights of vivid dreams.
After waking, he jots down memories
like the asymmetrical curve of her breasts
or the soft gulf just behind her clavicle.
He reads that only female bees sting
before they die. That can’t be right,
the man thinks. But he writes it in his diary
under points of conversation.
The day comes
when the living room walls stop rattling.
The nozzle whirs back to home base,
& the hunk of machinery beeps
before draping the apartment in silence.
On the platform is the visage of his wife.
She has thundercloud hair & sky-colored eyes.
Her dimensions are exactly like the pictures.
The man holds her in his arms,
& for a long time, he cries.
What amazes him is the softness
of her skin—so frictionless,
that his tears simply fall down
her shoulders like air.
The man steps back & admires her.
She has no flaws, no fear,
not a single scar or blemish.
But the pupils are not hers,
he thinks. They are hollow
& too deep,
like still sleeping moons.