phantom

I used to think of you

as a phantom limb

 

the piece of my self

I once swore I needed

to survive

 

to function

and exist as me.

 

the piece of myself

that was severed--

skin, flesh, bone, muscle

torn from body

you were there

in the blood and swollen tendons

 

there in the violent separation

of a dark and gaping truth.

 

You were the limb

I thought I lost

and in your absence,

I sensed you-- as if still you were a living, growing part me of.

I felt you and knew you as a lingering pain

an ache stemming from the invisibility

of the space

you once occupied.

 

In your absence,

I still feel you move

and flow

alongside the daily rhythms of my own body

as if trying to reclaim your role

as a fundamental necessity.

 

The moments I hurt the most,

are the moments I forget to mourn your loss.

 

and the detachment

haunts me with now distorted memories of

movements and sensations

I'll never again know.

I was once told that the frequency

and intensity of phantom pains

will usually decline with time...

 

and so I wait,

with one ghost of an arm

for time to make you disappear.