the poems i never got to read.

i just wanted to read a damn book

i remember

the fall,

the thunderous 'bang'

back hitting metal

bones splitting, tendons snapping

it didn't feel like time stopped

it felt like any other fall

but it wasn't in the fall;

it was spring-April, to be exact

i sought to take shelter under a familiar tree

book in hand and Emily Dickinson on the pages

i wanted to be tragic like her, i wanted

to be the woman in white, the sullen girl who

is so poetic, the whole world loves

and fears her. i wanted to be poetry.

the shock came and crashed over me as

i crashed over the threshold

i lay on the floor, blinking dumbly

shell shocked into silence

i couldn't feel pain, i just felt

sick, sweat ridden, like i had

the sweating sickness,

the one that killed Prince Arthur

all those years ago.

did he feel sick like i did?

i wanted to puke.

i wanted to cry.

i wanted to sleep.

exhaustion like i'd never known before

swept over my feverish body, a kind of aching

tiredness that cannot be ignored

i've spent most of my life 

making friends with slumber,

but this was something different; something omnipotent,

something powerful. something bigger than the sky.

"don't close your eyes," my grandmother said,

phone in hand, "don't fall asleep. don't go to sleep."

"i've never been so tired," i wanted to say,

but even forming words was a chore. my mouth was heavy.

heavy like my eyelids, heavy like

the men who picked me up and hauled me

onto the stretcher,

heavy like 

empty hospital rooms,

sterile equipment, x-ray machines.

heavy with the weight of words like

"surgery"

dense like the metal they cut into me

flesh and bone, how fickle

metal is sturdier, stronger-

i'm frankenstein's monster in leggings,

i'm ragdoll Sally in modern day clothes.

i traded metal for metal, they had to

take my piercings away, and i was naked

for the first time in years.

they stitched me up and put me back

together again, all the king's horses and all the king's

men, men in white lab coats, men with scalpels and knives.

(broken {hearts} bones are hell, but healing them is harder-

Emily,

did you ever break a bone?)

Author's Note

in 2016 i broke my ankle really, really badly and i've never written about it in length before but the time spent recovering was hell worth writing poetry about

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

i really like how you brought in the analogy of Frankenstein and his monster...the creation in the lab as if you were recreated....and the broken "hearts" crossed out.
because what you went through with your ankle..can easily be likened to the breaking the bone that is the heart...and the reconstruction...that leaves it feeling still so cold.
And you brought Emily into it...which makes me like it all the more since she is my favorite...yes, distant, sullen maybe...but i don't think necessarily unhappy with her existence...she had trouble keeping friends because her expectations were so high....she was so ahead of her time...she was in words more powerful than most of the male poets of the time...
j.