Pain journal
Bright bitter gash on a split and malformed branch,
plastic clamshell container, empty, taking up a vast
volume. A red rubber band wrapped around my ankle while you wrap
against the blackboard: “you must preserve the symplectic form!”
Its tightness and its static, zapping my leg hairs, distracts
me from this persistent soreness in my pelvic tendons, especially my right
thigh. That pant’s powdery white from absently wiping
the chalk from the board, as I also absorb the pride of your brackish
tone, what then was a saltwater confidence buoying
this laden lecture hall of roles, of who I could be, or become,
which in their weightless amble of anticipation glued
into a red-eared slider paddling close toward my thumb
and a tongue of orange rind while the porgies remained at a comfortable
hovering distance, but now as we squatted or leaned or just shifted
between the sparse blackboards, your voice was a friend’s
voice, freshwater, cold, an upwelling distress in which we became dense
and finally sinking, dispersed. Nursing the sappy and malleable blades
of a snapped linden twig, wiping the patches of powdery mildew aiming
to rid the leaves of them, completely, in the morning after they’ve grown back,
or blaming myself, rolling and kneading my thigh in the hopes of becoming
pure mind for the day. Pure mind as we scavenge handfuls
of walnuts and cherries from the thesis defense’s reception,
hugging the doctor but ducking proliferant plastic
champagne flutes. I scoop out a honeydew rind. A kind of pure practice.