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Nancy A Henry

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At The Chiropractor's Office

He tells me why I like fire music, as he
adjusts my spine beneath my shoulders
where the painful knot forms
which he says is my adrenal
where grief is stored.

He says I like the fire music
because it draws me out of myself,
that I need more water
to draw me into my tears
or to draw them out of me
I’m not sure which.

Belly -down on that steel table
I can see
the x-rays, my bones strung
like teeth on a cord and so unnerving
to see one’s own skull—
a sort of death’s head preview
one could not be meant to observe
from the vantage of the same skull, skin on.

This is the view of you in your coffin,
the spectre says,
of the state to which these quirks and
failures of the flesh will finally reduce you.
He speaks of water music
knuckling down my kinked spine
and I dream
of the fire that is for dancing.

 

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