Pain

This is not a cut that makes me wince, a bruised muscle
that makes me too stiff to move in the morning, 
or a joint that sends stabbing pain through a nerve 
making me cry out in pain.  No, those are now nothing
in comparison to what has happened to my body.  

A fire burns deep into layers of skin and muscle
spreading like lava to places the scalpel never touched
searing white hot, a soldering iron held to my chest, 
and I slip into darkness.

Glass shards grind along every nerve, churning like waves.
My nerve endings scream when I cannot. Steel claws
rip at me, a beast sporting with my limp body and I have
no will to survive, only a desire to escape the cruelty.

I rise and fall to the surface without will, unable to see
past the blackness that everything is. Falling back into 
nothingness is surrender, freedom, not knowing, 
not feeling.  Let the claws rip at me, let the fire burn.
I will sleep, unaware, unconscious.