Invasive Procedure on a Foreign Body

Pressed to loud paper on an exam table

by the cool hands of adults, unable

to discern between loved one and other,

the doctor's forceps go in. My mother

looks away. Did I scream, did I struggle

as something was coaxed out of my nostril?

Black and fetid, grotesque ball of cotton,

stashed in the skull to reemerge rotten.

No, I'll never again know how that felt.

My mother was there but no story to tell.

Its vital force has long since gone, now she's

lost sight of the memory, too. All these

details loosening, stitches undone. The

story based on an experience we

have both lost sense of having lived. Blotted

by time, this memory now forgotten.

Experience rots inside a story.

Once sustained and given form, now gory

with putrid stench from its body’s mouth. Stood

stunned, mother tells her son, “Brush your teeth good!”

The doctor speaks from the phone in her ear.

"There's something up his nose." In the mirror

the double looks away so neither sees

me entomb this secret permanently.

Must have worked, 'cause I don't remember. I

have to google "What does decay smell like?"

Putrescine and cadaverine; words to

feel as far from the lived scene as I do,

a boy in a tale. What is the secret

to feeling the breathed experience in it?

Divorce it from stale words too often said?

How do you revive what is almost if not dead?

Daniel Volk