Ode to a Broken Left Limb
O heel! O toes pinky and big! O all in between and the sore spot just below the space between the two middle digits. O ball and arch, parched with reptile dryness that beseeches to be scratched, to be peeled though it is not to be reached. O my smashed leg
once I took you for granted: your heel and knee could swing or pivot close in and up or stay as far away as you pleased. Your hips and thighs would move with someone else’s rhythm against shoulders in bed pump water while crossing a pool or a pond hurry down stairs when running late catch up when running behind. Now I do not know you anymore. We are separated by the hinge of my groin that cannot will not refuses to release in order to reach you — eaten alive by fear of popping the joint, dislocating the knee, cracking the femur. It’s been months. Months! You are almost not a part of me anymore: separate, other, alien, as I am from every other part of my body — except my hands.
O my hands You have remained within sight and reach, steadfast and loyal with a pen and a paintbrush and a knife fork and spoon. Is it worse to break a hand or a foot? An arm or a leg? A nose or a kneecap? Would I rather be blind or deaf? Or mute, or not able to smell or lose All sense of touch, or tongue?
And my other leg, O! I dare not forget you. I sing praises to my blessedly utilitarian hands but you, you too, have stood by me. You have been a girl scout a seraph a pillar a tree trunk holding me up for months with your oneness as your mate hung: a sheet blowing on a clothesline, a kite waffling in a tree, a side of beef punctured by a hook in a butcher’s window. You’ve given me no trouble, no trouble at all standing by mutely moving in support, asking nothing. Can I repay you? Your partner still aches everywhere, the ache does not subside, the ache travels. The ache changes its nature yet sustains in all phases of recovery especially in the knee
O knee: You are a mess; how can I praise you? But I must for I need you to heal; perhaps you have endured the most battering, the hardest brunt. It’s you who have taken a steadfast beating for the whole team —
My left foot heel, arch, toes, entire hoof, I am now told I can put you down. You can bear weight, though you still remain so far away. Before this we were intimate and I assert: We Will Be Again: I will bend down to slip sock toes over your toes. I will bring you to rest on my opposite knee. I will relieve your itch, polish with a pumice stone your calluses, admire from on high the perfection of a newly lacquered pedicure, slip you in and out of boots and shoes and slippers and sneakers and sandals and pumps and mules and heels and heels and heels and heels. O heels! Worn with stockings and a seam running up the back of calves and thighs! Lean toward you with no longer a thought for severing that hip, busting that knee, cleaving that femur once, then again. Christy Brown had only you, and Daniel Day Lewis showed us how you painted and wrote with yourself, as only a being in the most compromised of situations, the most cramped, crippled, incapacitated yet graced with driven mystic vision could do: Jean-Dominique Bauby alphabet winking his story and state; Helen Keller who held us in thrall in grade school as we imagined her inner darkness and light; FDR who led the country for goodness sakes with no legs. Quietly we wonder: would we be that able? That noble, brave, resourceful? Secretly we fear we’d be less than that, buckling instead to shock and self pity. Privately we know we’d be all too human: irritated, irritable, irritating, and not extraordinary. O, I long to be ordinary once again.
Pamela Gordon lives in the Bronx, NY, where she is a writer and a high school instructional coach. Her publications include salon.com; Poets & Writers; New Times; More; and The New York Times.