Make no bones about it; my left foot carried its final edition
in my genes since the day I was born. My left ankle’s collapse
a birth defect; its ankle fusion fix a failure, confirmed too late
by a CT scan for anyone to believe
my foot’s pain was 9 on a scale of 1 to 10.
There is bigger and better suffering everywhere,
this close to the end times, pictures of fire and famine eclipse
the sagging memory of my ragged metatarsal,
bone giving way, under the operating theatre lights.
by Victor Enns
from LOVE & SURGERY, Radiant Press, 2019