Synthesize

The body in me was screaming, crying out with rage.
All it ached for was one run, one sprint, one jog across the land.
I couldn’t give it that. Couldn’t trust my knees not to buckle from the weight,
that my thighs were strong enough to keep me standing.
I couldn’t play
and so my body starved, and sobbed and pleaded;
just one tiny jaunt, a walk, a step.
I couldn’t give it that.
Not one toe.
And so the body left;
put together pieces in a case, took flight away.
What was left is what you see.
In perfect order.
Well-thought out.
Decisive.
Intellectual.
Sound in mind
and lacking in what’s real;
what once had been the very essence, the awful everything of me.