Scattered, honestly it was horrible. She was scattered everywhere. And I don’t mean mentally. I don’t mean spread thin or over extended; I don’t mean anything like that. I mean a chunk of torso here, a sliver of nose there. And each piece frozen, yes, like the peas and carrot slices one buys in the freezer section at the market. Frozen chunks of her… scattered. I don’t know how it happened. There was no walk in freezer, no her sized vat of liquid nitrogen. Nothing like that. Like I said, just scattered, frozen pieces of her.

            I touched a piece, it was cold, of course, but I couldn’t tell you what part it was- something gray-ish. Spleen maybe… I know something of the lymphatic system, but I’d never seen pictures. I closed my eyes, holding the cold, possible spleen in my palm, putting her back together would take hours. I wasn’t too worried about thawing. The freezing seemed unnatural, likely she wouldn’t thaw according to physics or chemistry. Whichever discipline deals with the thawing of frozen things.

 I supposed I ought to find some way to organize the pieces. Outer and inner, back and front, something like that. Thank God the room was small, I wouldn’t have too much trouble finding all the pieces. I wondered if I ought to count them. It would be purely for the sake of do diligence. In case someone asked later how many pieces. Like a reporter, they always like to know those things, pointless yet poignant details, the kind that make you stop and think, “wow, that’s a lot of pieces, how horrible.” Of course I would want to have an answer.

I realized I was still sitting, eyes closed, chunk of her in my palm. This was no way to accomplish the reassembling of her. I’d have to open my eyes. Have to make a plan. I opened one eye, looked at the gray chunk of possible spleen, and noted the two dimensional cleavage, like feldspar. Honestly I would have expected one dimensional, like mica. Nature is full of surprises. Geology had always been more my thing. Anatomy is gooey. I’ve always preferred cold, hard stone to gloopy, drippy person insides. Except for her. I liked her anatomy, what I saw of it anyway. An awkward admission. I never admitted it to her.

I opened my other eye. Shards, chunks, slivers of her shifted into view. I supposed I could count and sort at the same time. Or I could sort and then count the piles. Knowing myself the way I do, I thought the latter might be best. If only she had known me. She might not have frozen unnaturally. I’ve been told I’m a very warm and inviting person. I kept thinking that if I put her back together, she might unthaw. I don’t know why I thought this, but maybe if I touched every piece of her, I could warm her.

I put the gray piece of possible spleen down and decided on a course of action. Two initial piles, pink parts and inside parts. From there I’d need an anatomy book to further organize the inside parts, but it was a start. Couldn’t finish if I didn’t start…