Going Cold Turkey
What I was nursed with then
was my pride, never
a particularly efficacious healer,
but one slipping about swiftly
in white silent shoes, ever ready
to give injections, intravenous drips
with tubes and a wheeled-about apparatus.
Even habitats of trays and bedpans
become addictive. All of us,
witnesses to our own disasters,
must walk away still mostly mangled,
finally prepared to amputate
every kind of pity, most especially
that fervent empathy we can muster
for our own, our very own
heart attack, car crash, paralysis, pain.