This Poem is A Reference
My doc refers me to a specialist because I hurt in the wrong right place and the right wrong place.
The specialist explains referred pain to me thus:
Your body cries for help from the point of strain, not the cause. Or sometimes, somewhere somehow else entirely.
Its language is semaphore of pain and ache and flare and nausea and the ship has been listing.
Do you know to what I refer?
A high arch turns a foot, caves in the gait, tenses the long, ropy knotted line of calf, thigh, and on up a corded chord of muscle humming like a hawser under such bloody tension it seems still, calm, becalmed and I’m terrified of the whipcrack snap recoil when the muscle breaks under strain and lashes out—
but the pain of all of this is felt high, higher, away from the low arch to where my hip is pulled out of joint and I hiss as I sit, wince when I rest, and that incongruity refers in turn out to a back, the glutes, shoulders tensed at the thought of trying to untangle this gordian knot and wishing for the sword.
The pain that is expressed may not be the cause.
And you cannot ignore the noise, can’t leave the ship creaking out of time.
Can you play scavenger hunt inside while slowly drowning?
Do you know to who I refer
When the doctor tells you to stretch like this, move like that, but learning to unclench is slow and hard and inconsistent and you hurt too much to be rigorous.
Do you know to what I refer? When I say pain felt is real, and to but also help me find X marks the buried cause.
I may know the girl who buried it. Some time long or short ago.
There is sand on my feet and grit in my gears; joints out of joint.
Pain refers. A body begs for help the way it can. I cry over spilt milk and wonder why. Feeling gutted on a reef, her hull disembowled.
Do you know to when I refer?
A reference librarian gives a haggard young sailor a brightly colored book on developmental trauma.
RE: Four top tricks to survive depression in this depression. To stress test your stress response, and stress that this is not a test of the emergency broadcast system, and yes I can attest those are sirens.
When it’s all like this, to whom do you refer?
There is no safe harbour for a ship under strain in this economy.
Take it easy, sailor. She’s not supposed to sound like this—
But you get used to it.
