The Chill By Christian Ward

My pain mirrors the peaks and troughs

of the Rocky Mountains. Some days,

my legs shift into twilight blue: like bluebells,

like spring skies, like lightly dyed denim.

Shades only experienced at unearthly

attitudes. A coldness past the peaks

of my knees. Legs tighten like vices.

The pain forces me into my wheelchair.

Daily, my body is a ship heading for the rocks.

I stagger from wall to wall. Brace for impact.

No drugs can help me now. I am a compass

needle caught in magnetic fields I can't begin

to understand, have forgotten the north I once

knew was abandoned long ago.

ABOUT:

Christian Ward is a UK-based writer who has recently appeared in The Hemlock, South Florida Poetry Journal, The Dewdrop, Dodging the Rain, The Seventh Quarry, Bluepepper, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Amazine, and Rye Whiskey Review. His first poetry collection, Intermission, is out now on Amazon.

EDITOR'S SONG PAIRING: STRANIZA - Painful by Gazgolder Records