Along the road,
you meet a man wearing a mask.
He asks you,
“may I have your liver?”
“No.”
He nods. He understands.
“Then I apologize.”
You’ve talked him out of it,
saying that he needn’t take your liver.
He agrees, with one condition:
you fetch the materials for a new one.

To first obtain the mercury
he requested, you’ll need to
go to the mines, and so you do.
After a week, you have it.
But you worry you may have left
Something in the mines;
Your watch? No, perhaps your
Hat? No, perhaps your Sanity?

The man takes the mercury.
He thanks you, and you thank him.
After all, he did not take your liver.
He then tells you,
to obtain the gold he’ll need,
you have to stay at the mines for a year.
You ask him if there is another way.
He says there is.
You remind him not to take your liver.
He apologizes; there is no other way.

The mines are not horrible,
not that pleasant, no.
It’s not the overseers,
they are too busy coughing
to yell at you, and you are
too busy coughing to hear them.
The mines are dusty, the air is dusty
but if you can barely breathe,
at least the walls haven’t caved in.
Not like they did the other week,
burying the old man and the
pretty girl, almost burying you.

After a week, it feels like you’ve been
at the mines for a year. After a year,
it feels like you will never leave.
At least you needn’t stay another year.
You go to the supervisor. Coughing,
you ask for the annual reward.
Coughing, he asks you what you mean.
“Ah,” he says at last, “did you not sign in?”
Not what? not sign in? surely…
“You have to sign in,
and then we start counting the days.”

After a while, the tears
won’t come, but you continue to sob.
After a while, you can’t sob,
because you are coughing all the time.
After a year, the gold you receive
looks no different from the coal you mine.
When you leave,
you wonder who is leaving,
and who was left behind.