Executing a perfect layout in a game of Ultimate

and landing on his shoulder, he heard more than

felt the bone snap like a chicken leg in a dog’s mouth,

and the teammate that grabbed his hand and pulled

him to his feet was shocked by the changing colors

in his face as his knees gave way and sat him down.

At the Emergency Room the nurse failed to ask or

notice his level of pain and walked him the length

of a merciless long corridor to radiation where the

x-ray technician reduced him to lip-bitten tears.

 

No break is simple, despite the diagnosis as bones

though hard are living tissue and not impervious

to injury, and even with their ability to mend, it is

the process that keeps the afflicted suffering while

the raw ends with marrow exposed begin knitting

together again, producing a net of fibroblasts that

spans the divide like a bridge under construction,

mortar and steel inching from solid ground to the

center of air with an engineers confidence that the

two will meet and the weld will hold.

 

It’s the reaching, the intuiting by one jagged end of

the other and cell by cell, recreating a whole from

pieces that causes every breath to catch like ours does

in the effort to align what we have sundered through

the years of leaps and layouts made with full knowledge

of gravity’s pull. I’ve held my breath against the hurt

as long as I can, but regardless of how far the healing

has progressed, I can’t not inhale.

 

© Dana Hughes 3.22.18