10/02/2025
The Session
Once upon a session dreary, while I lay there, weak and weary,
Breath by breath and sore of shoulder, sore of sacrum, sore of core—
Soft the diffuser’s ghost was streaming, lavender like twilight dreaming,
When there swept—performer beaming—grandiose through spa‑room door;
“Trust my pressure,” boomed the figure, “I shall fix you to the core—
Only this, and nothing more.”
Silken, sad, uncertain rustling of the drape and fleece was bustling,
As his bangles chimed like stagecraft, as his ego paced the floor;
“Cue the scalene! Cue the sacrum!”—thus he cried as if to a forum—
Thumbs like gavels, elbows quorum, pounding verdicts, oaths galore;
Then my ribs gave up their secrets with a crack I’d not asked for—
Whispered I, “Please—gentler…more?”
“Pain is progress,” cried the mummer, “Let me dig a little dumber,”
(Thus my nerves translated what his doctrine dressed in metaphor).
Up my shoulder climbed a fire; down my arm ran live‑wire choir;
Every noble little fiber shrank from his heroic war;
From the heated towel cabinet, hinge above the modest door,
Creaked a hinge—and nothing more.
In that hush there perched a shadow, black as basalt, lean and narrow,
Perched upon the towel drawer just over waxed and spotless floor.
Not a curtain, not a candle trembled at its perching angle—
Only then it tipped its head and let a single croak outpour,
Like a boundary given feathers, with a truth that cut to core:
Quoth my body, “Nevermore.”
Startled at the voice so plainly speaking for my joints and brainy
Core, I offered one more warning: “Lighten, please, I do implore.”
But the therapist, unfearing, grandly kept his oaths careering,
“Feel that? That’s fascia clearing—pain means healing at the door!”
“Sir,” I said, “your show is hurting; this is not what I came for.”
Quoth my body, “Nevermore.”
“Prop me, pause me, let me breathe—your zeal has teeth I can’t ignore;
Hands should listen, not deliver sermon, spectacle, and lore.”
Still he flourished, still he hammered—thumb‑fu, elbowed, pompously slammered—
Making crescents bruise and clamor where I’d asked for ease before;
On the bust of Palpation, perched above the treatment door,
Quoth my body, “Nevermore.”
“By the balm of kinder kneading, by the quiet craft of reading
Skin and sinew like a psalter few true therapists explore—
By the art that asks, not conquers,” (here my patience grew much stronger)
“I am ending this—no longer.” I sat up, feet found the floor.
“Keep your medals, keep your mantra—keep your gladiator score—
This session ends. I’m out the door.”
Then I draped the sheet about me, snow across a wintered shore,
Pinched the candle back to ember, spared the wax its wasted chore;
Paid the tithe to exit mercy, left his elbows mid‑encore,
Passed the gong and potted bamboo, slipped beyond the spa‑room door;
In the hall a hush like blessing, heartbeat steady, spirit sure—
And that shadow croaked once more:
“Bodies are no stage,” it told me, “They are choirs to restore;
Bring no trumpets to the tender, beat no drum upon the sore.
Hands that listen, hands that humble—open quiet’s deeper door—
These will mend what storm has scattered; these will soothe the aching shore.”
So I swore to book with caretakers whose craft is not a war—
And endure the other - nevermore.
