False Ribs

by Christine Barkley

I go to the hospital

with a blunt knife in my side,

right between the last two

true ribs.

Any lower and the ribs

would be false,

and I’d be called a liar.

Still, I’m told that the knife means 

nothing in a clinical sense. 

There is nothing in me. 

I want to say

can’t you see the knife?

but I’ll believe anyone

who doesn’t believe me.

They show me a chest X-ray

with no knife, no ribs, no name.

The knife is deemed irrelevant

to diagnostics, to treatment.

The knife is noted as

an exaggeration, a cry for attention,

a metaphor. A blow to the false ribs.

What was once a wound

or a lie about a wound

or a metaphor for a lie

becomes what they all do;

a fading bruise, a trick of the light,

an ache I learn to endure

and lie about.

They ask me

to rate my pain today and I say

zero. There is nothing in me

and no one finds the lie.

In any case,

I feel tender forever

and never trust myself again.

(first published in Door is a Jar Magazine, Fall 2022)