recovery runs through our morgue

 
KT tape and sheer ugly will  
hold me together  
after five hard miles,  
and I’m low on both  
as my thigh quivers to  
keep my knee under me  
 
I stop to water  
a tree with  
forehead sweat and  
angst-filled  
swear words  
 
reveling in  
my weakness.  
 
A dead person’s  
sinew is screwed  
into my new knee,  
and, fuck if some days  
I can't feel the  
cadaver’s ghost  
asking for it back  
 
My lips stick to my teeth  
as my leg shakes.  
I didn’t bring water for  
such a short run.  
 
Such a short run.  
 
But surgeries,  
infections,  
broken stiches  
and broken soles  
 
(broken souls)  
 
haunt more than my  
lumbering steps.  
 
This was sanity.  
To run.  
To run until the earth was flat  
and the mountains towered  
below my immortal being  
 
To run five miles to get out of bed,  
and 20 miles to get out of my head  
 
It was sex, and drugs,  
and red wine slushies  
and lucidity in the silent dawn  
as godlike,  
I flew through nameless  
dreams of my own mind  
 
In one moment it was gone.  
One snap.  
One wrong move.  
And I lost it all.  
 
I rub the throbbing  
scar where the doctors  
Frankensteined me to life  
and I know one thing with surety:  
 
I’m not who I was last year.  
 
My body isn’t as perfect.  
I’m not a machine.  
My endurance is gone.  
Five miles hurts me in new ways.  
 
I breathe heavy,  
and smile.  
 
I am not who I was last year.  
 
I’m so much more.  
 
I lost the part of my being that  
I needed to stay alive.  
The part of me that kept me stable  
and made the  
fucking horror of life  
something  to curl against  
as I dopamined  
a path to freedom.  
 
I didn’t lose a knee,  
I lost me.  
 
I have it back and every  
goddamn second is the best  
second, ever  
 
I find myself in tears at the end of  
most runs now  
but not in pain,  
pain pisses me off,  
but in gratitude.  
 
Because I didn’t know how shitty  
life could be without freedom  
 
And so it goes with you,  
my love.  
 
So it goes with us.  
 
You were my sanity.  
You were sex, and drugs,  
and red wine slushies  
and redemption  
 
In one moment you were gone.  
 
(gone)
 
One snap.  
One wrong move.  
And I lost it all.  
 
Goddamn I hated the injury,  
(goddamn, I hated you)
 
You left me sitting in a pile of shit  
with an open wound,  
infected in soul  
gnashing out septic promises  
to anyone who'd hear  
 
but fuck my stupid cunt of a heart  
when you said  
you were sorry….  
 
(deep breath)  
 
(Me too.)  
 
As my feet  
shuffle forward,  
shaking,  
and fearful  
(of you)  
(of us)  
because the wound  
is so fresh  
and recovery  
was so  
fucking  
hard,  
 
every  
goddamn second  
with you  
is the best  
second, ever.  
 
Because I didn’t know  
how shitty life could be  
without you.  
 
I find the  
pain and renewal  
of a short run  
on a mended knee,  
in the base of my  
corroded soul  
 
as I fall back in love  
with the way  
your hair curls  
at the nape  
of your neck,  
even though I know  
how high the rate of  
reinjury  
really is.  
 
Yet my heart races  
at the way your lips  
feel against my palm  
 
because we are not  
who we were  
last year  
 
We.  
(We.)  
 
are so  
much  
more.