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# Numb
- URL: https://www.andyposner.org/numb/
- Published: 2022-05-22T23:04:19.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-15T05:03:00.000Z
- Description: I can't decide anything these days: sonnet or free verse; to read on the couch or spend my son's brief nap putting away dishes as if dishes could ever stay clean; hope or despair...
- Author: Andy
- Tags: poetry, #Migrated-1784090317409, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-15 04:39

I can't decide anything these days: sonnet or free verse;  
to read on the couch or spend my son's brief nap putting

away dishes as if dishes could ever stay clean; hope or  
despair. Once, before our lives became a chore punctuated

by slivers of respite, before quarantine and insurrection  
sprang from dusty textbook to the evening news, I asked

if my poems could make your heart sing, and you said *yes,* 
*but my heart has been numbed by time.* Not long after,

I had an infected wisdom tooth pulled; refusing anesthesia  
\--in truth, I feared not waking--I was given laughing gas

and Novocain, and the doctor went to work with his drill.  
I must have clenched my jaw, torn the muscle: back home,

after the medicine had worn off, pain shot from my ear to my  
neck like a line of fire ants chewing through nerves, the worst

pain of my life, days of ice and opioids and crying for it to stop.  
I think of that now, how badly I wanted not to hurt, how sweet

the relief, how no matter what we choose to numb it, agony waits  
like a coiled snake in the heart's tall grasses, how our feet bleed

on the flaming sands as we run to the sea. My dear, I worry if you  
do not hold me against the salt's incessant sting, we'll drown.