Once A Dancer (Poetry)

You’d think it was a friend
the way it hangs around
and nags — it’s got an awful lot to say
my ear is deaf and I get on
the best I can
ignore it — hope the hell
it goes away

But it persists — insists
it’s now a part of me —
an element — a burden dragging low
as punishment for daring to be different (?)
the counter-weight of health
to keep me slow

Alone with pain
the silence has no answers
rage cuts deep as any surgeon’s knife
my feet remember steps
like any dancer’s
the body pines for youth’s
less tapped-out life