phantom pain
it’s a slow-acting poison
that hides in two dollar frozen pineapples
and erasers with faces drawn on them.
felt my legs go numb in team sports years later,
felt pinpricks on my tongue when
friends came in odd numbers. a weathered
soldier in my shadow, shot in both legs but still
hopping over landmines.
must have been enlightening, watching
a predator turn to prey, watching
a cornered animal with its fangs pulled out,
no teeth left to bare. it’s a slow-acting poison
that crawls through the insides of
a dog that’s learnt a trick: mercy
looks like kindness if you squint hard enough,
and maybe you’ll even earn a treat.
it’s slow enough that by the time it hits you,
their shoulders have brushed past yours
and there’s nothing left to
squarely place the blame on. it’s slow enough
that by the time you’re on your knees,
it’s too dramatic and exaggerated to be real, and
so it must be a phantom pain you’ve fabricated
from newspaper clippings and your
desperation to be pitied.
but it’s real,
you know this, because even once
the curtain falls on your unlit stage,
the soldier doesn’t stop hopping and the
old dog can’t learn new tricks.
frozen pineapples
are still two dollars each.