Definitions of Agony

“Do cockroaches feel pain?” 
is the last thing I Googled,
right after “Do crabs feel pain?”
and “Depression symptoms”
See, lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about pain
and the way it destroys, the 
monsters it creates, and if the healing
is arriving too late.

Yesterday, I held my hand over the sink
and an ant crawled into my palm,
legs so light on my skin I felt nothing.
Still, it felt like the most natural thing
to turn on the tap, and tip my hand sideways.
I watched the ant scrabble desperately against the current,
pinprick of black on cracked white expanse,
for a few distant, disembodied seconds
before, with a jolt of horror, I reached out again
and moved it to the windowsill.

Quickly, still dripping, it skittered away.

Instinct, they call it,
but that ant could not have hurt me
so why then, this capacity, this near-longing
to stamp out vulnerability?
What about rage makes it so easy?

Anyway. Like I said, I’ve been thinking
about pain and all its different manifestations–
body-pain and blooded-pain,
woman-pain and brown skin-pain,
pain inflicted and pain inherited,
and how my mother and I
are both going insane.

Pain, the constant refrain.

I am never without it and I am never 
not craving it. My insides gripped by violence,
seeking victims for relief.
But the pain of others
frightens me and so I am the only target
of my own brutality. 
(It is hard to be a beast 
with hands always, always faltering.)

And so every scrap of softness I offer
comes at such a price.
Limbs breaking, claws snapping–
my heart never stood a chance
against my mind’s savagery.

God but I feel it,
festering in me.
God but I see it. 
The desolation I could wreak.