Contributor Series 7: The Confessional Diary of Bone
Only for a Moment
By Ryan Haack
I was born with a short left arm; just after the
elbow, it ends. And now it carries a nasty scar,
advertising the futility of my slippery feet.
I stepped out of the porch onto the first of three
slick stairs, each covered with a slight drizzle. Then
I slipped, suddenly thrown to the sidewalk with a thud.
I stood and cursed and paced and moaned, feeling
the bone pushing at my skin, trying to break through,
trying to escape like a convict from his cell.
The doctor said I didn’t just break it; I broke the
hell out of it. “Well, that’s good,” I thought, because
hell is bad. I asked him how we’d fix it and he paused.
Surgery, a metal plate and seven screws later, my
bones are back together. The staples securing the
wound looked tough and made me feel like a cyborg.
Things are mostly back to normal, though with less
range of motion and a nagging stiffness. I’m constantly
reminded how one slip changed everything in an instant.
Each time I drive by that house, now empty of anyone
I know, my bones resonate with the memory of their
trauma, and the fear takes hold, but only for a moment.
And now, when someone sees the scar and asks
what happened to my arm, I get to say, “I was actually
born that way,” and then, smiling, “But I broke it, too.”
Ryan’s poem Verbal Destruction and Restoration appeared at vox poetica in September as part of Contributor Series 6: A Currency of Words.
There is an old saying, “You wouldn’t have any luck if you didn’t have bad luck. Sounds like it applies here. Great summary of a rotten day.