Idiopathic & Juvenile

by Benjamin Rigby

Sharp-warm fresh-horrid 

is the sensation when my acetabulum 

meets the top of my femur 

scraping/rubbing/splintering 

as I take step after  step. 

The feeling is novel but the body, 

a machine of skin and bones, is old. 

How can that be when I have yet to see a decade? 

Oh, how I winced and wept in my mother’s arms, 

begging 

Her for answers she did not possess. Deep down, past 

the intersection between bones 

watching helplessly as 

the volume of receptors 

racked with guilt, 

remember who was to blame. 

Another visit to my second home 

of blinding sanitation, cold hallways 

filled with whimsical scribbles, 

and the uniting cries of every mother          father         and child. 

My parents, with faces masking 

      desperation 

that ever so delicately slips through the cracks, 

      pleading with the man 

who knows my name only because I am suffering.