Linda Cronin

IN THE BEGINNING

For weeks, I try to conceal
the limp distorting my stride,
making it difficult to run during a recess,
to skip during lunchtime. Each doctor
my parents drag me to, specialist after
specialist demands to know when
I fell and twisted my foot. Did I jump
off my bed? Or down the stairs?
Not until my fingers start to swell,
inflating like tiny balloons,
does anyone suspect the truth.

The pediatrician, my doctor since
birth, first says the words,
rheumatoid arthritis, as a possibility.
Only seven, I hear their rhythm and sound,
awkward and unusual. I laugh at them
repeating them until my mother tells me
to stop. Those two words adhere to me.
A label lasting for years after the sound
of the voice fades, like a price sticker on glass
the residue remaining long after
the original disappears.

That day, perched like a bird ready to fly away,
I sit on the examining table in the tissue-thin paper gown,
too young to understand what’s happening to me.
I imagine old people, white-haired and wrinkled,
smelling of peppermints and dust, stiff and cranky,
hobbling from place to place,
clutching their canes. Not seeing myself, my future,
the stiffness of my joints, the trouble
walking, running, the doctors’ visits,
The needles. Not realizing
how my body would change,
ignoring me as I begged my legs
to work, my hands to bend and grip
my body betraying me,
turning on itself, attacking my bones
and joints until they disintegrate
into ashes and dust.

Each day presenting new challenges,
different battles than the day before:
climbing stairs of the school bus,
zipping me coat, brushing my hair.
As time passes, the memory of that
first day in the doctor’s office fades,
erased by all the visits that follow.
Until years later, sitting in the park,
watching leaves fly through the air
like confetti, I recall those beginning days
And how lost I felt, tumbling
through space, uncertain where
I would land, and if I could find my way
through the crooked currents to come.

Linda A. Cronin, a poet and writer of fiction, recently completed her first poetry collection. Diagnosed as a child with rheumatoid arthritis, she expresses herself and explores the issues she faces through writing. Her work has appeared in The Patterson Literary Review , Kaleidoscope, The Journal of New Jersey Poets, Rattle and Lips.