Written by Hasti Salehi
Animations by Parham Ghalamdar

I

II

It takes two lungs to choke on air.

It takes no legs to run away.

It takes ten fingers to forget a face.

It takes one stomach to eat yourself alive.

It takes one brain to invent pain.

III

It takes two eyes to crawl out of your skull.

It takes one mouth to let the worms in.

It takes two hands to tear the skin off politely.

It takes one heart to keep beating after you’re gone.

It takes one tongue to strangle you from the inside.

IV

It takes one skin to hold a stranger’s blood.

It takes six fingers to open the ribcage from the inside.

It takes no bones to stand.

It takes one jaw to crack open the sky.

It takes four eyes to forget what light looks like.

V

It takes one heart in a steel cage to keep beating after the chest is gone.

It takes one lung made of glass to whistle while it fills with oil.

It takes a second spine to walk backward into your own throat.

It takes two mouths, bolted shut, to chew through the noise.

It takes one tongue plated in chrome to taste the electricity.

VI

It takes one skin stitched from copper wire to keep the blood in.

It takes six fingers, tipped with drill bits, to open the ribcage from within.

It takes no bones, just a cage of titanium rods, to stand.

It takes one jaw with hydraulic hinges to crack open the air.

It takes two shadows, both projected from your severed head, to keep you company.

VII

It takes one arm with rotating joints to twist the past into knots.

It takes a ribcage of welded iron to trap the heart until it stops.

It takes a second stomach, stainless and warm, to digest your own teeth.

It takes four ears wired to each other to hear yourself thinking.

But it takes no blood at all to keep the machine alive.