Pathology of Absence

No pathology explains why your absence presents as pain

Though there was an incision, executed with a precision that bordered on virtue

Clean margins

Controlled depth

No visible hemorrhage

It was not termed entry

Only a necessary intervention

A measured breach expected to resolve without complication

You approximated the tissue

Sutured silence in meticulous layers

Drew language taut to preserve the semblance of integrity

To maintain the fiction of an unviolated surface

You remained clinically intact

Vital signs unremarkable

Structure uncompromised

A closed system governed by its own discipline

While . . I

Less absolute in containment, began to register deviation

A persistent tachycardia of thought

A subdermal inflammation without locus or lesion

A progressive sensitization to absence itself

As though the body, having once admitted you, refused your removal

No anomaly sufficient to warrant intervention

Only a condition diffuse, insidious, resistant to classification

And now

I feel like

I am living in a space

Where no scalpel can excise what remains

And still

No pathology explains why your absence presents as pain