in pain, I don’t experience pain as repetition
though I’ve knelt into nausea this way before
and bent, reminiscent of prayer or surrender
like looking again at Agnes Martin’s The Beach
the texture of a tissue protecting an engraving
pain touches the mind with a similar distance
entirely prepositional, dependent on proximity
an order bordering on the look of a thing
seen by a dreamer, my sense of self returns
without illness, a casual traveler, book in hand
glare flares from the page struck by sunlight