Reflecting Pane #I

At first, you don’t understand. Their words just a white noise of sharpening blades. They wait, as you gather your shredded belongings.

You go down to find them, making their darkness complete.

Shoulder to shoulder, whispering, would you like a place to rest? Unwelcome, they flock through the gates of your bleak surprise.

You can barely talk with this pain.

Imagine your losses rolling, white-tiled, through hospital halls. Trailing sooty rags of risk factor, unbedding dank treasure. You don’t know the right questions, can’t grasp these dark matters. Words won’t explain why.

You must go under, like them.

Your rigorous scrub down of care, facing up for harsh treatment. Sliced up and hosed down in mixed blessings, like no complications.

To grow silent and listen.

Those destitute beggars, bedded and bathed, clean up just a bit. Their mutterings begin to take shape, giving you names for each one of your pains.

If only you could forget their faces.

Hauling them into a hollow. Stuck with them. Sick of them. Still, you must bind them. Spooning soft food in their sharp gaping beaks. Bathing their fears in soapy distraction. Nursing the ache for things to get better.

Tempered and frayed, you kneed all these pains.

Grinding them down to your blades. Serrating the edges to slice a way back to a world that will cut you. Dodging glances of pity, pretending to pass.

Practicing the shapes of your words in a mirror.

And when the scars soften, their mutterings grow harsh, shoving you into the glass, all looking daggers. Pinning you back to your reflection.

Demanding you tell their story. Now.

Reciting their names by nightlight, tracing their battered edges. You knew them so well, when you first made your vowels. Small victories of misspelled transcendence: worrier to warrior, rising to the surface.

Catching your breathe. Gently.

Isn’t that what we learned? There is no instant cure for a shattering. Only a sun-turning salutation against soft-facing sheets, rustling with hope.

And the pain, clearer now that it’s fading.

What story shall we tell? Choosing a handful of words, still glazed with their faces. Sheathing a sentence you understand.

I am standing here now.

This is my reflection. Gazing out across the pane.

2–2–2018: The two-year anniversary of a surgery for jaw cancer. N.E.D.