"Pain Body" by Lindsey Novak

When my new doctor tells me,
Humans average about 19 pain-free days a year,
I say,
That’s sad.

Yes, that
is what I meant to crack,
spent all day waiting
for the runny yoke of my spine—

This is where my pain lives:
C3, playground fall,
gravel pushed up into my palm.
Grass green, they hop headless.

A playground filled with violence
behind a church filled with more.

Mrs. Burns liked to whip my bare five-year-old behind,
yank my noodle arm into the bathroom every day—
the one that still pops out of place.

I was too young to form memories, then,
so the why now is a question mark—
marked like my red baby ass.
Mrs. Burns was a moth to its flame.

They believed they were teaching us about God,
and maybe
they were.

Father, forgive them
for they know not what they do.

But for me and my house,
we have given up;
see no justice in a system,
no colors reflected in white.

When I pulled the heads off the grasshoppers
I thought it was a game
we were both playing.
I did not understand.

I can still smell them
like grass
behind a church
under an indifferent sky.