ManicDDaily

Pared Down

So, what if, in those days
when Despair walked her like a dog,
heeling her sternly,
one of those cabs she dashed in front of,
not exactly on purpose, but not looking both ways
when faced with any chance to dart away–
to bypass the silver flash of plate glass, to out-dive the splash of yellow
under white-skied sun, to feel, for a moment, lucky–
what if one of them had, in fact, crashed
and Despair smashed
into the tar, and even though lashed
to her same stretcher,
had ended up as hospital offal,
ashen–

Would she then, after the long recovery,
the fitting of fiberglass or steel, the pairing
of the prosthesis–
would she then, nights,
after its pegged bulk had been unbuckled, bedside,
long for you–
I’m talking to you directly now, Despair–
Would she feel, in the flat vacancy below the sheet, down comforter,
your abscessing absence–
Would she, wakeful
in the ache cast by your phantom, prop herself up,
and not quite able on crutches to feel her way, still search
by window’s glow, some bottle of balm or pill–
something that might kill pain
from afar, a heat-seeking missile
encapsulated–

And what if, by some strange happenstance, you, Despair–
that limb that is so much a part
of her given form–were restored–
the despaired-of calf reattached, the rank ankle knobs
re-positioned–
Would she now dog you? Trot gamely by
your re-joined gait even as you heeled her sternly,
after, that is, you held her close–

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Here’s a sort of poem for the “play it again, Sam” prompt on With Real Toads, hosted by Margaret Bednar.  Margaret gives a choice of certain past prompts–the one I chose was by Kerry O’ Connor to write a labyrinthine/mazelike poem (hopefully influence by Borges.)   The picture is another recycled one, I’m afraid–called “between a rock and a hard place. ”  (All rights reserved, as always.)