Shut-In
by Natalia Lincoln
I
Come visit me; I'm still as young as you, though
Percocet and Vistaril, the kindly ones,
have aged me into drooling stupor, ashen-faced,
an adolescent crone, trapped in her apartment.
White and waxen walls,
a melting honeycomb in which I knit myself,
a smooth unmoving crash of boredom.
Over me, a shawl of yawning. Flesh and bone unmoving
sulk disease, mobility means crawling,
and second nature is a crutch for me to stand with.
II
Nothing's natural. The pounding of a rapid walk would crush
the embryonic joints, healing from the stroke of healing scalpel;
going around the block's a new Olympic sport, enough to
turn my quadriceps a-quiver with fatigue, after no great exertion.
Pain's the real exertion. Inquisitive exploratory pains as I bend
my unaccustomed knee, as if a road devil reached up from sidewalk
and held my foot as I go cumbersome through sludge, pulling,
pulling so the tendons creak and click and pain splits open,
my new ligaments screaming, "You're wrong, you're wrong." But
This injury is healing, and too much healing's injury (just
ask an adhesion), and so I break it open, day after day,
Break open the white waxy mold of stillness, my home,
Where I cannot bear another moment.