Photo Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Renaissance Tapestries

cut off

he still feels his toes
now and then, he tells me
even though everything below the knee
was amputated years ago
the nerve stumps touching
his fancy prosthesis still
send echoes of what they once
conveyed truly -- this
phenomenon does not surprise me
the surface wound where
you were cut loose from me
has long since healed
and still I get
occasional reverberations
of the extension of myself
that used to be you
as though I might still
reach out with your hand
toward the rest of me
or wiggle all of our toes
and under my own power
walk smoothly once more

acm





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