The Cuff Releases

I sat down at the machine to wait

for a prescription. Nothing more.

The cuff inflated. Held me straight.

I had a minute, maybe four.

So I looked down — the inner wrist,

the blue line visible below

the skin, the thing I'd always missed

by being somewhere else. The slow

inflation of the cuff had held me

still enough to see what's there:

the vein, the skin. The pharmacy told me

nothing new. In the glare

of pharmacy light. I didn't find

a revelation. Just the plain

blue line and time enough to mind

the fact of it. The numbers came.

I peeled my arm out. Took the slip.

I left. I hadn't healed

a thing, just had the kind of trip

inward that happens when you're stilled

by nothing much. The wrist went back

to wrist. The blue line there the way

it's always been — the quiet track

the body runs without my say,

without my attention, without my thanks.

I drove home. That's the part I keep:

the body going, drawing its own banks,

the blue line there while I'm asleep,

and when I'm not.