pain
Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul.—
Final Harvest (Boston, MA: Back Bay Books, 1964), 124.
When I was a teenager in Boston, a man on the subway handed me a card printed with tiny pictures of hands spelling out the alphabet in sign language. I AM DEAF, said the card. You were supposed to give the man some money in exchange.
I have thought of that card ever since, during difficult times, mine or someone else’s: surely when tragedy has struck you dumb, you should be given a stack of cards that explain it for you.
An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008), 73.