Aftershock Protocol

Three weeks past the surgery

and the hand still shakes—

a tremor so slight it could be

the pen's fault, the table's

vibration, anything

but what it is.

I signed a check at dinner.

The ink skipped across my name

like a seismograph

reading an event the mind

has officially closed.

The waiter looked away.

Not at something else.

Away. The studied mercy of it—

his gaze finding the middle distance

the way it does

when someone else's difficulty

has become visible.

The mind has issued its ruling: healed.

The hand dissents,

arrives each morning at the same

involuntary testimony,

the same unsigned verdict

it has no authority to overturn.

I set the pen down

and watched it roll

toward the table's edge—

slowly,

the way a question moves

toward an answer

it already knows.