Shark Bite?

No, I have not been attacked

By shark, bitten in the murky deep

No, I have not been gored

Blind sided by wild prairie beast

No, I have not been maimed

By bird of prey, swooping,

knocking me off my feet

Yet here I lie wounded, splayed

Sensations of vulnerability, embers

of feeling attacked, gored, maimed

By surgery I don’t remember

Caregiving by design to bring pain

Putting me down on the ground

unable to rise just yet, I consented

Still guarding my wounds,

in absence of any memory of a fight

As I am healing here

in abundance of loving kindness, light

Yet processing what my body remembers in a twisted wallow of confusion, grief, trauma of my surgical  “shark bite”

I am grateful, shocked, exposed,

weepy, even in awe—

Both admiring and horrified by my

bleeding, rawness of my incisional scar

Knowing what could have been…

Knowing I won’t be going anywhere far

Wondering now what gifts are

already sewed in—

Yet to be revealed, healed,

tattooed by the stars