THE SHADOW - OF PAIN

Taking Xanax for Pain

Given shrieking pain or bone gnawing fatigue, I'll take fatigue in a second and this
hot sharp pain has wound me up like a toy until my springs shudder and shake
and I think they will recoil, snap, sending me wild, an explosion that will
Not explode, a collapse that will not give, a break down that just winds tighter until I rupture scatter into a million pieces, but even that won’t be allowed
But then
the panic begins to recede like a syrup tide, taking the tightness taunt
tense frozen taking the fright, alarm, shuddering recoil, trepidation
that was closing in double fists over the already
Insufferable intolerable unbearable that must be suffered tolerated born
The graphic twisting pain may dim, not depart but may be muffled
pushed down with a damper that presses hard for the pain may become pressure and ache

No. The bright piercing pain hasn't gone at all, it just
Doesn't matter
the exhaustion is close on the footsteps of the fierce pain
now running together, pacing one another, running through over throughout
Up and down down and up up and down
All those clear overlays in the encyclopedia H
For "Human"
clear pages laid one by one over a still very silent man that
Dale Jackson and I used to look at in kindergarten, the huge book on both of our laps our feet sticking straight out from the couch turning translucent pages with fascination
Pain has run shrieking up and down each and every transparent page
each and every system over and over eternally forever and now again this
wearing exhaustion paired with the suddenly unimportant pain
Goes burning up and down skeletal muscular respiratory reproductive
vascular excretory digestive circulatory nervous nervous nervous
Nerves and my head wants to keep dropping forward, but the fire doesn't seem to matter anymore because the panic is gone

and Dale is gone. He faced the virus, plague of a new century, viralpoison screaming up and Down over and through all those translucent pages, he fought
for skeletal muscular respiratory reproductive vascular excretory digestive circulatory nervous and lost

Somewhere in time, two little children sit with the H encyclopedia on their laps
feet sticking straight out from the couch turning transparent pages with
fascination, but not knowing
not knowing at all what it
Means


©Edwina Peterson Cross