[336 words]
A medical diagnosis is a baptism into a new name.
New cultures with dialects, manners of speech, words
to make meaning. You have to translate, use
every concept you’ve ever heard to explain the joint
pain, snaps, crackles, the hardening into frigid ice
of your leg bones connected to your hip bones.
Ezekiel in the valley teaches the order of bones
without giving them, their spaces, a name
of someone important like Reynaud’s, an ice
caused incident in your veins. Or, Greek to you words,
cold agglutinin disease that makes your joints
swell and revolt when put to use.
Rheumatism is the name they used to use
for people who held trouble in their bones.
Cold, stiff bones, aches in their joints
movement of the watery humors, the French name
for arthritis because what words mean, the words
to describe our bodies, our experiences can be like ice.
The Inuit have more than one hundred words for snow, ice
their language glues, agglutinates. You use
siku- the base word for ice, with other words
sikussak- ancient ice that doesn’t drift, like arthritic bones
iceberg- sikuleq, sikuaq – thin ice, a name
that joins, like the true purpose of joints.
In English, words are surrogates, like ankle joints.
Function as a geographical location, the massif of your knee, ice
not said in Latin, pressed to your intertarsal joint, its anatomical name
stripped of feelings. Words are difficult to use,
none of them describe what it’s like to live with your bones,
not your habitat, language, meaningless words.
We should create a new vocabulary of words
to bring joy – capricouscoupler, hymnseam, lustrejoints
add songs, rhythm, wonder to our partnership with bones.
Eschew the frozen wasteland of our hurt, ice,
venom when we describe putting our bodies to use.
Even these tongue-twister languages do not say your name.
Load all the old words, pains from bones, joints onto the ice
cast them out to sea, they are no longer of use.
Your diagnosis doesn’t define you, it’s not your name.
Christa Fairbrother, MA, is the current poet laureate of Gulfport, Florida. Her poetry has appeared in Arc Poetry, Pleiades, and Salamander. She’s been a finalist for The Pangea Prize, The Prose Poem Competition, The Leslie McGrath Poetry Prize, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She’s had residencies with the Sundress Academy for the Arts, the Bethany Arts Community, and her chapbook, Chronically Walking, was a finalist for the Kari Ann Flickinger Memorial Prize. Water Yoga (Singing Dragon, 2022), her nonfiction book, won medals from the Nautilus Book Awards and the Florida Writers Association. Connect with her at www.christafairbrotherwrites.com
