The Paddock Review

PRISON BREAK

 

After the stroke, you will be held captive in a body

that no longer recognizes your authority. Your codes

won’t work anymore, your keys will not open doors.

 

The guards will take your cigarettes and tequila,

your Netflix binges and buttery foods. You

will live on weak coffee, dry toast, and pills.

 

You will look out through the eyes’ tiny windows

(though blinds will be drawn over one or both, so

you see everything through fog), and you will not

 

remember why your hand—is that still called hand?—

is draped over the arm rest of a walker. Somewhere

deep in your skull, you will feel your brain command

 

your left foot to lift and take a step, but your toes

will taptaptap at the floor like a Newton’s Cradle.

The neurologist will call your lockup deficits, but you

 

will call it Ischemia’s cruel joke. To undo her

damage, you will practice closing the gap between

thumb and finger a million times, button and unbutton

 

Sally Learn to Dress over and over, until one day when

the guards are busy, when the insurance company declares

you MIA, you will hear, faintly at first, a lock tumbler click.

….

This poem is from the chapbook Stroke, Stroke by Marcella Remund (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/stroke-stroke-by-marcella-remund/