A Recovery

I was given a sedative, then a nerve block.

With a terrible dryness in my mouth,
I was unable to speak
or ask the nurse how they knew

            the fragments wouldn’t find their way back together on their own,
                        meld into new mechanisms and relocate to their former

                        compartments—

I fell asleep and woke with
tangles of surgical silk sticking up
like pebbles under my skin

When the IV was removed,
my mother tried to catch the lost blood and hold in the rest
                        but there was no way to stop it,
years of too-high-hematocrit unspooled from veins
slack with anesthesia

On our way home, I wandered into the bathroom
of a fast-food restaurant, arm pinned snugly
against my breastbone in a mesh sling.
When my mother found me, she gave me
ice water and drove me to the house,
put me to bed on the living room couch so she could

monitor the blood
force cold into the plaster &
peel the electrode stickers from my chest

With the sutures cut away, the incision
widened to an estuary lined with rigid fiber
The occupational therapist scooped aloe
from a jar and worked it into the skin with a metal tool,

the breaking and dispersing of crystal

Kristin LaFollette is a writer, artist, and photographer and serves as the Art Editor at Mud Season Review. She is the author of Hematology (winner of the 2021 Harbor Editions Laureate Prize) and Body Parts (winner of the 2017 GFT Press Chapbook Contest). She received her Ph.D. from Bowling Green State University and is a professor at the University of Southern Indiana. Learn more about her work at kristinlafollette.com.