Phantom Limb

Written while in a painful state called divorce, it is mostly finished. Hopefully this will never be explored again.

Help me
I'm hurting where
There is nothing
But this air
Right there, where my limb
Should be

I was asleep one night,
And I woke up to find a part
Or a peice of me gone wrong
When I woke up there was the air
Where that part used to be there
Like a picture that was hanging
Taken down and all that shows
Is the line that forms the empty
Like lines that glow around
Around darkness of whats still gone
What still missing cant be found
This is like the shape
Of winters winds and breeze
This is like learning about being
In vacuum and you find your body
Doing things that try to feel
But all that you feel is pulling
Pushing unseen forces pulling
Fighting for a place in darkness
Trying to find it where it can
This is like having a world aborted
From the center of your hand
When I woke up from this slumber
I realized I was never sleeping
The entire time I was looking away
While from my body you were leaving
I watched the knife seperate me
From a piece of me you lived in
A peice of me that lived in you
And my eyes were blind to see it
But my inside tells me stories
About how the knife was cutting
And deep down the sleep receded
And when the dirt was shown
It revealed how much pain was inside
The place I made for you
Where we called it our own
But it was not where you wanted
Imagining an arm like cancer
Thinking about a leg like a thorn
Peircing up into my heart
Each step like a sacrifice
That place was empty long ago
Covered in the muck of covered sin
The silt of oceans wearing thin
I could see the shape it was so strange
I didn't recognize the place
We laid together in our bed
Or the window of our morning
Where we should have been
Glass shattered now or dissolved
Only empty eyes staring through now
Laying in each others arms
Together having only two
Room was made for us to fit it
To this now unrecognizable room
Fitting together in one tomb
Some half was taken to a stone
And the angel said to go ahead
Make sacrifices in the name of union
The rock is like a bed prepared
For each other to lay together
For our suture a singnature
Signed by the butcher we remember
The one who took away our father
Made us forget about our daughters
Now we lay here on the table
Like two corpses colder that the arctic
We needed fire for the forgotten
But we remembered all our phantoms
Limbs that wandered off in silence
Itching ghostly in the darkness
We remembered seperately, together
Now we itch with fears and worry
Like two ghastly vapors fading
We worry about what does not exist
Our heads lay together
Side by side
But the air between us grows
As the parts that brought us together
Are now the thing that made these ghosts
Phantoms to each other
Phantoms to ourselves
You couldn't recognize my shadow
I couldn't recognize that limbless mist
Vapor making shadows next to me
We miss our arm
We missed what was taken
But instead of being one with two arms
We wanted four arms for two people
Ignoring rumors of our stiches
Pretending really not to care
But air removes what matters most
The air is the knife that cuts
We put our air in the doctors hands
While he had a mask on
Saying that it should be succesful
But we will put you both to sleep
Faster than eyes can see
Faster than we could know
You'll be waking up again
Only this is not cosmetic
And only you know it is there

I woke up to a ghost
And myself, I'm doing fine
Except for this place that itches
All through the night I groan
The surgeon calls it phantom limb
It will go away in time
Let the nerves all die away
And then you will sleep at night
-Your arm still missing
Nothing we can do about that-
But the surgery was a success
And your heart is a bloody mess
But don't forget the itch
You blamed each other in your dreams
I watched it on this screen
Funny thing how hearts stop
Beating they were together
They stopped before I started
What you brought me here to do
Okay, I see you're dizzy
But thats a side effect
Of the medicines you were given
It was breathed in through a mask
Like a vapor full of sleep
Like a breath of dreams

Author's Note

This is an experiment in stream of consciousness, though undisciplined. Try explaining a deep pain you have never felt outside of a 1 to 10 scale, and this type of writing will result.