Severance

Phantom pains and poetry:

severance

Four in five who lose an arm
still feel its missing fingers itch,
will know the phantom throb of
weather-fronts in severed bones.

Just so I felt today, my fingers
riding window-currents,
tickled at the place
my wedding-band once lay.

Disappointed thumb
that finds the cool, grooved
knots entwined there gone:
a thrill of liberty I did not want,
a gnawing ache that will not fade.

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