Getting older, falling apart

Cars and people—same same. When Other and I moved to New York, we had an old Dodge Dart that we parked on the streets. Slowly the peripherals began to disappear in the night. The side-view mirror, the hubcaps, the gas cap. But its rebuilt engine remained strong. And weirdly, to us, no one stole the vanity license plate, which read Objet (objet d’art, get it?).

Four decades later, I’m suffering the same fate. My breasts, my lymph nodes, and bits of my face and back are scattered in pathology labs around the city. There seem to be more strands parked in my hairbrush than on my head some days. And now there’s talk of amputating a deformed toe—easier to take the toe than rebuild the entire foot, I’m told, especially in a person of my age. 

Pretty soon I’ll be told that it’s cheaper to buy a new body than to keep fixing the old one.