When the Pain Meds Wear Off

To live is to descend—
a self submarine searching.

Seal tight the valves
to protect from pressure,

sea rising overheard. Feel
a place made for submission,

bodies tectonic, survival
a matter of absorption.

Cut all communication
from clear surface,

submerged stoic silent.
Be careful not to fall

into the trench left behind,
the hole where hurt

sinks, lit only by those who manage
to live without the sun.

Prognosis

Doctors say I cannot
balance on my own
body a promise broken

as blade into a flesh
that will not forgive.
Chronic is a bird

thrashing. I am
guessing again at how
to live in a world

able-made, a marrow
knowing until scans
show a darkness

buried bone deep
or a body refuses
easy definitions. Doctors

manipulate plastic
skeletons hope hung
on stark office walls

to suggest a future
where pain is managed
like an unruly child.

A full life is still
possible, they promise.
But I spy absence

perched between bones,
rustling in the cage
of shuddering ribs.

Sarah Fawn Montgomery is the author of Halfway from Home (Split/Lip Press, 2022), Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir (The Ohio State University Press, 2018) and three poetry chapbooks. She also has Nerve, a craft book on unlearning the ableist workshop and developing a disabled writing practice, forthcoming with Sundress Publications, as well as Abbreviate, a short collection of flash nonfiction, forthcoming with Harbor Editions. She is an Associate Professor at Bridgewater State University.