The Toll

For several years now pain was interrupting everything I was doing.
It was the loud cacophony in the foreground. It blocked out people and conversations.
It twisted my face. It absconded with time. Its color was haze.
It prevented me from sitting down, from standing up, from lying down, from taking walks, from holding still.
I’d leave a task and wander off, because being in one place would turn me to stone.
It took my face, and left a broken grimace.

These nights I have grown gaunt and green
my face grown stranger with pain.
A stranger’s face.
Green and tan and red, the colors of my skin,
With blue rings around my eyes like oceans surfacing.

My face slick and taut,
pain has left its oil spill,
the fish of my cells,
floated belly up.

Or was it this-

Did hornets build a nest in my head?
I could feel the endless stinging,
Hear the ringing.

or

Is some devil frying my nerves like pork rind?

There is sometimes this crackle and flash, like fireworks going off.
Like pain is celebrating its Independence Day, as it rages unchecked like a wildfire.

I have never heard of anything like this.

Every pothole on the road between here and there slays me.

But still I must get there.