Adaptation
Penciled-in trees overlap with telephone poles
marking the casual way the neurosurgeon instructs
me. In just a few weeks, he will cut into my brain. I
half-listen, yet fully watch
how the sun is surpassed by clouds
and realize my body is just as someone would sketch
it: smudged and stricken with rough-hewn lines. A
human body is on a list of things
that occupy the same space
the same dimension as any other shape,
as common as a triangle or circle.
Now in the midst of disease,
this neurologic, shaking illness,
I feel myself becoming what is opposite,
separated or divided
not fully imbricated, not fully creased or folded,
not salient, or stitched tightly like scales on a
fish but rather something lightly borne
and dropped suddenly, a simple outline
resembling the muted
arrangement of an early morning sky.
