Adios, Felicia
When they couldn't sedate me
And needed to cut strips of flesh
From my eyelid, I heard the sizzle
Smelled the scalpel burning as it sliced
And glimpsed the steam rising
Through a peephole under the
Sterile towel tent covering my face
Flesh harvested from my eyelid
grafted into the cavern under my eye
Pit left from digging the cancer filled
One hundred and twenty three tiny stitches later
an ice bag tapped to my head with a warning
it would hurt like hell when the Lidocaine died
I lied-I was going back to my hotel
And on that dark highway in the pouring rain
I could see well enough with one eye
Until sixty miles west on I-80
Burning hot all consuming hell, stabbing, sharp, wish I were dead
Pulled over into aq Wendover casino
To kill the pain
When I'm drinking and gambling, life doesn't hurt.
Faded away until it really wasn't there
Enough to sober up, get back in my truck
Poorer than I was--but money
Never made me happy.
You did
My emergency contact.
My ride home
Pathetic that this is your poem
You are not a bad person.
You gave yourself away.
You took yourself back.
And that's alright
I take me back, too
And like that, there's no emergency contact
No one to drive me home
And I wish you had a better poem
Than this...
I'm-hurt-you-should-feel-sorry-for-me
and my wounded heart
Attempt to what?
Get you back? Hell-no
Don't know what you were, or why
But you had to be removed
Just like the cancer in my eye--you had to go
It's not pretty and leaves a big hole
That some other part of me must fill
It's uncomfortable
And it hurts
Yeah...
and there's nobody to drive me home
But I've been through worse
I'm happy to turn the page
If there's something better for you
There's something better for me
Something better than this
Pain management poem.
That you will never read, but somehow
Makes me feel better
Adios, Felicia
Copyright © Steven Young | Year Posted 2022
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