Chronic Pain
         “The cure for pain is in the pain” – Rumi

The tink of the gold band tumbling
down a shower drain.
Finding the unposed photograph of your mother
at seventeen, falling
in love with her, knowing
you will never know that girl.
The bleary-eyed stare of the goat
in the Long Island game farm pen
standing in a pile of its own filth.

Jumping rope on an incline on a treadmill
on uneven ground, in heels.
The interminable walk to the uncomfortable
upholstered blue chair across
from the oncologist’s overlarge desk

The inescapable knell of genetics whispering
from every pour-spout on the bottles
glowing against the mirror behind the bar.
April-tender soles of bare feet on a slow three-mile walk
down sharp-shelled Glen Cove beaches.

The too-tight toe-box of sexy boots
that cost two hundred dollars
that you wear anyway because
they are sexy and cost
two hundred dollars.
Staring into the aquarium tank at the octopus
that stares back from its crouch in a crevice
of rock, smart enough to know it is trapped,
doomed to a dry death if it escapes,
passing time punching passer-by fish.

The gut-sick heart-drop when the elevator dips, but stretched
into minutes          and hours
and days                 and years.

Colleen S. Harris earned her MFA from Spalding University. Her most recent poetry collections include The Light Becomes Us (Main Street Rag, 2025), These Terrible Sacraments (Doubleback 2019, Bellowing Ark, 2011), and chapbooks Toothache in the Bone (boats against the current, forthcoming 2025). Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Berkeley Poetry Review, The Louisville Review, Cider Press Review, The MacGuffin, and others. She goes by @warmaiden on Bluesky, Instagram, and Twitter, and her writing is collected at colleensharris.com.