Phantom Pain

 

Phantom Pain

                    What do they call it? 

                       Phantom pain?

                    When you've lost an arm or a leg?

                    I have that now

                    On my left hand

                    Not pain, really

                       Not of the hand

                          Not of the finger

                    But the ring is gone

                    Not lost or stolen or given away

                       Not severed

                       But, yes, severed

                           Removed

                    It took me a lot of days

                    To sever it, to make it no longer a part of me

                    It is a memory my brain will not allow to fade

                    The habit

                    The searching for it every single day

                    The awareness that it is gone

                        Removed and missing

                           Gone, but not away

                    I don't know why exactly

                    But I took a safety pin

                    And hung my two rings to a lamp shade that goes to a lamp on my vanity

                    I see them every day

                    Hanging there when I do my hair or makeup

                    I think I put them in this strange and stupid place

                    To remind me that they do not define me

                    I did not place them someplace reverently

                    Or safely

                    I placed them randomly, attached with a safety pin to a cloth lamp shade

                        There they will stay

                        Until one day when I store them away

                            The day my brain allows the memory of what they meant

                               Of what they meant to me

                                   Of what they once meant to him

                                To fade completely away ...