Sometimes the best medicine is medicine. Ask a poet. A surgeon’s dull scalpel still cuts deeper than post-structuralist critique. Merriam-Webster lists twenty-two synonyms for comfort and not one is a pain killer. In the nineties a pickled shark sold for twelve million dollars. One pill of hydrocodone retails for a buck fifty. Sometimes the body is a furnace and pretty words are kindling. This summer I drove home to take care of my mother post-op. I filled ice packs and did laundry and when I could I jotted down plots. My burgeoning book weighs heavy in me. My mother’s foot is two ounces lighter without the betraying bone. Day three of recovery and my eyes are clouded by a scene. I don’t see the crutch as it slips from my grasp, clips my mother’s big toe. Neurons in any place on the body fire at the same rate. The brain conjures odysseys without moving an inch. The foot takes a step.