Self Portrait, after Bone Density Test

I lie very still on the bed 
of the densitometer as its arm 

sweeps over my body. Unlike Vesalius 
or even Galen, the doctor won't see me

as a figure stepping off a pedestal—it wants 
to see inside itself and so moves aside 

the curtain of its own scalpeled flesh, revealing 
organs so neatly penciled there. The radiologist

reads shadows cast by the pillars in my cathedral 
of bones as well as the rate at which beams 

are absorbed by soft tissue, in comparison to bone. 
By whatever light, each is part of a cipher locked part 

by breakable part: scapula, gladiolus, floating rib, 
pelvic cavity; even the smallest phalanges of the toes.