Ode to My Liver

Ages ago, being the badass that I was in high school, my 5 on the AP English exam meant that I automatically placed out of having to take the typical freshman English class sequence in college that everyone else had to suffer through. So instead, I opted to take Creative Writing with a professor that everyone absolutely adored and also, because once upon a time, Creative Writing was something I fancied myself as being good at.

Now this class was wonderful- mainly because it did not entail having to memorize obscure plant species or find an integral or name some obscenely long chemical compound. I liked it because all I had to do was write. Which normally wasn't a chore for me! Unfortunately, this one particular professor had a thing for poems. He hardcore loved them! I learned more about different kinds of poems that term than I ever wanted to. And our final assignment entailed writing ten poems that belonged to one specific form (a haiku, a sonnet, iambic pentameter, whatever). At that point, being the earnest, young, and completely naive pre-med/Bio major I was, I decided to write a series of odes. But it gets better- these weren't just any old odes, they were going to be Odes to my BODY PARTS. Yeah, I was that cool. It's frightening, I know. Anyway, the entire experience was highly painful (all of a sudden, Gen Chem III didn't look so bad) but I got through it, got my A, and moved on.

Most of my odes were lacking (admittedly, it is rather difficult to wax poetically about one's spleen) but the one that captured my prof's attention, and the one that eventually went on to win first place and a hundred bucks in our school's Week of Writing contest when I was a junior, was the one that I wrote to my liver. And this morning, as I was hunting through my external HD for something completely unrelated, I found it again. So of course I HAD to share my greatest poetic work to date with the masses. I use the term "masses" loosely, because again, I have no idea how many people read this, but hopefully it makes you smile, just a little. It actually just makes me cringe a lot, because boy oh boy was I wayyyyy off with the anatomical and physiological details, but whatever. I know better now.

Ode To My Liver

Oh liver, you poor bulbous mass,

Of brown and pale green.

You sleep in my body,

Resting next to my engorged tummy.

Full of the slimy green bile,

That keeps us alive.

You are always neglected

By the writers of today.

They choose to wax poetically,

Over hearts instead.

But liver, you are our unsung hero.

You are scarred,

As much as I am full of lard.

Every time I ate my feelings

Be it, in vats of ice cream

Or bouts of incessant drinking,

Your bile salts went to work tirelessly,

Breaking down every bit

Of garbage that I consumed, fearlessly!

And after all of that!

You went and did the unthinkable!

Filtered my blood!

Without my even asking.

Our precious little cardiac sacs

Would NEVER

Deal with all our high-fat snacks.

Its delicate little arteries

Would get clogged up.

And then what would we be left with?

A godforsaken heart attack!

But liver, you will never let me down.

The only organ that I

Will forever count on

Crusader for clean blood.

Marauder of fats and crud.

Liver, you understand my agony,

In all its totality.

Full of impalpable stoicism.

Functional til the end.

Liver, you truly are,

A girl's best friend.