Why the weak wrist? What was it I did
so many years ago I’ve nearly forgotten?
Little irksome pain. Cast back.
What was the name of that—?
We try not to look it up on our phones.
Now that she’s dead, there’s no one to ask
about these lesser known incidents.
I think it was summer.
I think there were stairs.
Something seems familiar
about the brace’s rigidity,
the thumb’s constraint.
And the ankle and how it sometimes turns
from under me. Niggling twinge.
Bike tossed
in the ditch to walk home across the narrow
bridge, over roiling muddy water.
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Kelly R. Samuels is the author of the full-length collection All the Time in the World (Kelsay Books) and three chapbooks: Words Some of Us Rarely Use, To Marie Antoinette, from and Zeena/Zenobia Speaks. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee with work appearing in The Massachusetts Review, RHINO, River Styx, The Pinch, and Court Green. She lives in the Upper Midwest.
© 2023, Kelly R. Samuels
Halfway Down the Stairs 