Siham Karami

THE CIRCUMFERENCE OF PAIN

Listen to Audio Version read by Jill Khoury.

The body is 360 but sometimes it breaks
into 2-D, strapped in a bad dream
and a hospital bed's electric trap
moves it up and down.

Back home, we learn the art of turning,
realigning on the horizontal, new angles
no one dares touch. Fragile,
your nerves rattle against the china,
the clanging pots.

The slightest whisper pierces through
your arched frontal lobe
telegraphing tiny lights
along invisible portholes on your skin.

We wrap ourselves around your silence,
sneaking little pieces of everything we lost
when your expanding voice made us forget
where we should have been.

And you wrap yourself around our quiet
doings and undoings we never tell you about,
afraid you'd stop us in the wrong places
and something unheard of could break.

* * *

NOW

Listen to Audio Version.

The last time you walked you made a little circle.
Now your legs struggle just to stand.

The therapist chided us: he'll do it on his own!
He didn't know the x-rays missed the spot
where the fracture was. We saw the sweat,
your life-force pouring all into that walk.
There must be something wrong.

Now we prop you in a regular chair,
take pictures: a vision of the way you were last year.

Now two must transfer you into the car,
helpful people asking, Can we help?
You who'd rather flirt and tool around in vintage cars
now star in distressingly heartwarming scenes:

the smiles of passersby that mean so well! Yet
cut through your pride.
I'm not paralyzed! I'll be walking in a month.
You pore through pictures of yourself before.

We keep up with the news, the everyday
beginnings and disasters of the world,
larger things, perspective on what counts,

not what you were but where we are,
now.

Siham Karami co-owns a technology recycling business and lives in Florida with her family, including the love of her life who was recently disabled. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in Angle Poetry, eyedrum periodically, String Poet, the Lavender Review, Mezzo Cammin, Innisfree Journal, and other venues, as well an anthology, Irresistible Sonnets.