Side Effects
Leaving people behind is not for the faint of heart. Strength is needed to callous the excised body part. That’s what separation is. This is the meaning behind the famous quote, well the gist of it is, if they love you they will return to you. You remove their presence and just leave the hole. Hoping it will grow back and this time hold.
A surgery such as this requires sedation. This is the part about self medication. Nothing hard or chemically compounded. Just a drink and something to facilitate meditation. It can lead to euphoric manifestation or malicious hallucinations. Intoxicated with the power to operate until it wears off and the phantom pain starts again.
With any surgery there are risks. The separation can cause increased appetites for dangerous things. Things like satisfaction. The things which will lead to more than a hospital staph infection. Sexual Russian roulette, what’s your bet? Just a side effect of letting go. Searching for anyone to mask the pain. Hoping this person will take it away. Closure to holes created by the damage of your now missing limb.
Maybe one of these other bodies will lead to an infection. Set in and not let go. A symbiotic situation, one gets nourishment and the other a companion. And once the symptoms of infatuation begin, we’ll both dig in. We’ll take hold in each other’s immune systems. Incurable is the goal for most. Patients dying to live with their disorders. Dying to grow with a host.
A shortsighted treatment plan. A blanket attack clouds the system. Too many foreign bodies let in. Yet with a veneer of protection, I’ll label you a placebo before our trial begins. Never stood a chance to heal me proper. Double blind treatment. Neither of us see the truth in each other. So you think you’re effective, I seem better. And oblivious to your feelings I refuse to let you in. Honestly, my improvement can’t be measured. I sabotaged the trial. In reality I’m not looking to be cured for a while.
No longer steady, time flies. Lost from being under too long. Erasing the moments when your body was whole. The pain of trying to heal the trauma is too much. Memories stretch and pull like the iron bands on the drums they’re kept in. Medical storage pushed to the back of the conscience. Allowing for slippage through the passages in the mind. They contort and compress and expand with lies. Some you tell yourself to justify removing perceived problems from your life.
Remembered slightly bigger and more grandiose than before. These memories contain more humor, joy, and sorrow. You can’t change the past by what you do tomorrow. Some get lost on this path and end up wanderers. Byproducts of the surgical anesthesia. Stranded through the sands of forever unable to move on. They leave this place and land in purgatory. Just a side effect of elective surgery.
