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_posts/2018-05-20-post-op-images.md

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+---
+category:
+- Poem
+- Rated G
+counts:
+    characters_real: 2514
+    characters_total: 3302
+    file: _posts/2018-05-20-post-op-images.md
+    paragraphs: 25
+    type: jekyll
+    words: 603
+layout: post
+tags:
+- Poetry
+- Gender
+- Surgery
+title: Post-op images
+---
+
+<div class="verse">
+
+Saturday is for mechanics.
+Sunday is for terror.
+Monday is for acceptance.
+Tuesday is for purging.
+Wednesday is for anxiety.
+Thursday is for sleep.
+
+<hr />
+
+When I am asleep
+The world changes around me.
+In spring, I am changed.
+
+<hr />
+
+I'm no good at images, only words,
+and yet for days after surgery,
+as anesthesia and countless
+    milligrams, milliliters, millions of
+drugs leave my system,
+I'm lousy with visions,
+each lousy with meaning.
+
+I lay in bed, unable to move,
+struggling to keep my eyes open;
+I know that if I close them,
+    I'll be lost, I'll be lost, I'll be
+mired in waking dreams,
+coherent visions with all the logic
+of that paler side of consciousness.
+
+Perhaps the veil here
+is still too thin and vague,
+the pool too clear, the monsters too scary
+    too lean, too mean, too hungry, or
+perhaps I was too close to death
+to come away totally unscathed,
+too close to completely survive.
+
+    It's as though, laying here,
+    stinking of hospital,
+    I'm seeing emotions play out,
+        Scene after scene, scene after scene,
+    anxiety shown in heaps of discarded entrails,
+    hope in the ceaseless ratcheting of gears,
+    determination in the marching of feet.
+
+If I were an artist, perhaps
+I could hope to touch these images,
+but as it is, every word falls short,
+    too vague, too inexact, too tight to
+hope to explain something so vast
+by the very act of attempting to reproduce;
+I can only hint from the margins.
+
+That poetry can accomplish what prose cannot
+in its economy of motion
+is attractive to me, here in recovery -
+    so tired, so tired, so tired - so
+maybe I can hope to express the dire import
+of these visions dancing behind closed lids,
+or at least remind myself on rereading.
+
+Even now, a week out,
+I'm starting to lose touch with the visions,
+I can almost touch them if I squint,
+    lie real still, don't move now, but
+even then, a shadow of the substance...
+I'm starting to consign to memory
+that which was probably memory to begin with.
+
+<hr />
+
+It is two hundred miles between what I expect and what I want.
+Two hundred long strides that seem impassible from one direction,
+    and from the other a day's short drive.
+
+It is nine and a half hours between question and answer.
+A half hour of jazz, nine hours of sleep, a scant second of perspective,
+    and I can only traverse in one direction
+
+It is eleven inches between who I was and who I am.
+Ten of those inches are pain, the eleventh is numb,
+    There's pleasure to be had in there, I'm promised.
+
+It is twelve years between what I want and what I get:
+Ten years of remembering who I will become, two years running,
+    Eight days dreaming.
+
+<hr />
+
+What have you changed?
+    <em>My mind</em>
+What changed you?
+    <em>Nothing</em>
+What became of it?
+    <em>I am not who I was</em>
+
+What have you changed?
+    <em>My name</em>
+What changed you?
+    <em>The word</em>
+What became of it?
+    <em>I am called who I am</em>
+
+What have you changed?
+    <em>My looks</em>
+What changed you?
+    <em>The light</em>
+What became of it?
+    <em>I am seen as I am</em>
+
+What have you changed?
+    <em>My chemistry</em>
+What changed you?
+    <em>The substance</em>
+What became of it?
+    <em>My form is my own</em>
+
+What have you changed?
+    <em>My body</em>
+What changed you?
+    <em>The knife</em>
+What became of it?
+    <em>I am shaped how I am</em>
+
+What have you changed?
+    <em>Nothing</em>
+What changed you?
+    <em>I was accepted</em>
+What became of it?
+    <em>I accepted myself</em>
+
+What have you changed?
+    <em>Everything</em>
+What changed you?
+    <em>Everything</em>
+What became of it?
+    <em>I became who I am</em>
+</div>