The Phantom Limb

I can still feel it.
Its ghostly presence never lets me forget.
What was once flesh and bone is now something ensnared
in the pulpy marrow of memory.
The cold limb dangles from the socket, but not really.
The cold limb has a felt immanence to it,
but not really.
This is the problem with the appendage haunting:
it eludes but it remains close like some kind of
conflicted lover.

Surely this problem will sort itself out.
A psychosomatic disturbance of the insistent
and insidious sort.
Surely it will sort itself out over time.

I know there are others like me.
Those poor, wounded individuals
torn apart by war or a pox that infects
the cellular tissue.
They live like me, and feel the unmistakable
haunting like I do.
They grasp at the sweat-ridden sheets with a spectral
arm of elusive dexterity.
They find it hard to sleep.
They find it hard to work.
They partake in the good fight against
the deceptions of the ghost, and the autonomy
of the phantom appendage.

Cut it off, doc.
Not the ghost arm.
That would be impossible.
I am talking about the mind.
Cut that off, doc.