Shel Graves' Sensorium

The worst part after I broke my wrist was being in urgent care when the medical staff realized that they needed to take off my wedding ring before my finger swelled impossibly. It was already a tight fit. They feared for the ring. “Just cut it off,” I said. “Just cut it off,” Sam said (the one who I am bonded to by said ring) I was willing, in that moment, to part with it easily, a symbol of love, an object. Just don’t let it be painful, I thought. I was in a lot of pain and thinking about how it is for the animals at Pasado’s when they are in pain and we are moving around them trying to figure out how best to help without causing them pain, but maybe we must cause them pain and even certainly intend to by giving them vaccines and drawing blood.  All I wanted when I was in pain was for no one to get close to my injured limb and bump it. Just stop moving, I thought. But I knew that they must. In fact, I had come to these people, voluntarily, for some kind of helpful busyness. The ri...

At the end of his life, my father became an elephant,  And he walked in great circles, circles, circles, And the psychiatrist said I should find him a labyrinth, So, he could walk around as he insisted, and I said, “No. No.” All of my life I have seen my father walk in straight lines,  And I have seen him wrap his trunk around the tail ahead of him,  And the one behind him holds his tail tightly, and his loyalty in,  So, these great circles, I said, they are new and make no sense.  At the end of his life, my father became an elephant,  And he wanted to walk away from the herd to die,  And the priest stood in front of him small and suffering,  While father circled away into great rising clouds of dust.  All of my life my father stayed with me silently,  And his great elephant tears did not stop his circling,  And the sheriff rushed to restrain his wild dusty limbs,  So, I said, “No. No.” my father is not an elephant, he’s just o...