Grafted Marrow
Copper-scented blood pools around the grafting knife as it presses a jagged shard into yielding tissue. This violent union forces the body to negotiate with something foreign, testing if the graft will settle into a rhythmic pulse or remain an abrasive intruder. Through this friction of bone and metal, the individual is no longer a static thing but a shifting sequence of integrated parts. The ache in the marrow eventually settles into a quiet, unified hum.