irreparable
I think the first sign, at least to my mother,
was at the age of five
when I broke half the bones in my right hand
and did not shed a single tear.
I did not even pause long enough
for the pain to be considered an event.
I simply carried on with my day,
until she noticed the unusual swelling softening
the lines of my delicate hand.
She searched my face for agony -
for some proof that I remained tethered
to the ordinary laws of suffering.
But I only watched the swelling bloom beneath my skin,
with the detached curiosity
of a child watching daisies open in a spring field.
She stared at me then,
as though she had glimpsed something
standing behind my eyes:
a creature that had learned to consume pain
as casually as sugar dissolves on the tongue.
Perhaps the fracture was indistinguishable
from what I had already been taught to endure,
Perhaps it was far easier to bear
than the violence that lived unspoken within my mind.
Or perhaps it was simpler still:
I no longer found difference between agony and living.
One did not interrupt the other.
They had learned to coexist —
indistinguishable,
unremarkable,
one.
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