What I Knew By Morning

The numbness started in the elbow.

Not pain —

more like a dial turned slightly down

in two fingers, the ring and the pinky,

right hand only.

I told myself: slept wrong. Desk wrong.

The kind of thing the body fixes

quietly, on its own time.

I told myself this through the evening.

Then one in the morning.

I stopped and typed it.

Forty minutes.

The search bar completed the sentence

before I'd finished —

the way it knows you, always ready.

I went from a medical summary

to a forum thread

to a man in Ohio describing

the year it took to get a name for it

and what the year after that looked like.

I closed the laptop.

The ceiling held the screen's blue

for a long time —

a faint rectangle, fading

at the edges first.

I lay there with the new word.

The way you feel something

added to a coat pocket:

no heavier, technically.

But you know it's there.

Around three the fingers went

slightly strange again.

Or I convinced them to.

I genuinely don't know which.

Morning came.

I poured coffee with the right hand.

Noticed I was watching the hand.

Tried to stop.