Poem for Wednesday and Arm Repair

The Fire
By Katie Ford

When a human is asked about a particular fire,
she comes close:
then it is too hot,
so she turns her face—

and that’s when the forest of her bearable life appears,
always on the other side of the fire. The fire
she’s been asked to tell the story of,
she has to turn from it, so the story you hear
is that of pines and twitching leaves
and how her body is like neither—

all the while there is a fire
at her back
which she feels in fine detail,
as if the flame were a dremel
and her back its etching glass.

You will not know all about the fire
simply because you asked.
When she speaks of the forest
this is what she is teaching you,

you who thought you were her master.

--------

I got up early Tuesday morning to take Adam to the orthopedic surgeon, an activity that ended up taking up pretty much the entire day, though that was a good thing -- our goal was to get him taken care of as much as possible so he can move to college on Thursday. We went to the same practice where Daniel had his arm set when he broke it three years ago (a similar injury, though not as severe). The first doctor who examined him and his x-rays felt that it would be better to use pins than screws to set the bones and thus avoid more significant surgery, but he couldn't perform the procedure until Wednesday, which would have made move-in on Thursday pretty much impossible.

Thankfully, he contacted another colleague at the practice who agreed to do the procedure on Tuesday, so we stopped at home very briefly at about 11 a.m. and a couple of Adam's friends dropped by for moral support, then we went to the surgical center, where Paul came to meet us (the office conveniently had wi-fi, so he could work while we waited). The procedure itself only took about half an hour, but between prep and recovery time and all the rest, we were there till late afternoon. When we finally got home, Adam ate to make up for missing three meals, then fell asleep for several hours until we had a late dinner. My parents stopped by with ice cream for him.







Adam couldn't take his heavy-duty pain meds for another couple of hours, so after we had dessert, we went looking for something that was funny, not too long, and free to watch in case we ended up being too tired to finish it. We settled on The Dictator, which was actually much funnier than we expected and less offensive (yep, the Middle Eastern stereotypes are terrible, but the America-bashing is pretty strong too, and I am going to go around reciting "My great-grandfather fought in the American Civil Jihad" all week). On Wednesday Adam wants to rejoin his orientation group in College Park for the afternoon and dinner, so I have to recover my energy to get him there!