TwistedThe surgeon has straightened
me out as best he can, my bones fused, twined with stainless steel. Pins harness my skittish vertebrae, ball bearings support my questionable spine, my sideways being. I am myself, but a new construction, too. People treat you different when you are no longer bent. I see it in their face, the absence of dismissal. The lack of quick and fulsome pity, the small smile. I fear my spine, leaning, listing, going slant again. I fear the return to what I was. I have become an expert on curvature. I’ve learned a world of new terms, acquired fluency in deformity’s language. Kyphosis. Stenosis. Scoliosis. Hunchback. Call my misshape what you will. I could say that’s gone, the titanium rods are all inside, my crooked’s my secret. But one can only hide so much. The defects are always there, like the flaws in a weakened bridge, the mending plates in a rehabbed house. Straight’s been way overrated; the cripple lurks inside. And she comes out, whenever there’s something I don’t like. I tilt, I stumble, I shuffle down the corridors. I remind you of what you’re not. I shoulder myself against walls. I keep the center off. |
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