Automata

The tapes burn into my skin.
The machine drubs back my rhythm.
Around me tumble words:
Arrhythmia, p-waves, systolic
as the doctors’ murmur over
my heart’s sudden antics.

Strange, how often
I begged that heart to break
in grief, rage, despair;
wondered it could endure
such pain to no good end.

And now it is breaking, I see
it was not mine to command,
was never a heart of sighs and words
but a clockwork, timebound and
fit only for mechanics.

My Apartment (Newly Disabled)

This is a square
and that is a square
A square where I’m here
A square where I’m there

A square where I sleep
A square where I eat
A square where I struggle
to get to my feet

A square for the pain
A square for the grief
A square for the drugs
that don’t bring relief

A square for a window
A square for a door
A square for the things
I can’t use anymore

A square for the walks
I no longer take
A square for the pictures
I no longer make

A square for the stars
My only view
A square for tomorrow
And the days after too.

Siege (Chronic Pain)

I’m on the wrong side of the castle.

Portcullis let down for good,
embrasures insistently filling with arrows.

Am I inside or out?
Protected from worse or
shown the door and told:
Get lost!

And then there’s the moat.
The livewire ends of nerves.
The comfortable bridge demolished
that let me wander and return.

The only choice now a side:
Stay in and don’t live.
Go out and suffer.

Rebekah E. Bartlett is a consulting editor, writer, photographer, and amateur astronomer. She lives near and works in Boston, MA and has a master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts. She is in remission from a rare cancer and recently has struggled with getting a proper diagnosis and treatment for disabling chronic pain.