Substitution
A Poem
A mosquito bit my hand in the shower —
watch me dig my fingernail into the swell,
substitute the pain with a different one.
Like how a bad day is erased with bourbon,
or whatever-you-call-your-pain is replaced
with whatever they call retail therapy.
The humid wind coming through the window
always smells like my grandmother
’s backyard in Illinois. The length of her grass
went up and down like a 1980s stock market;
like how pain goes up and down
with the birth and death of each child.
They say it skips a generation,
this pain as long as a bite, this pain
as short as the click of a cigarette lighter.
She had a detached garage
where her new husband kept the fancy car.
I remember how he’d wash it every day.
No one was ever allowed to drive it.
©️Trapper Markelz 2025
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