Pain Scale

Charles Grosel

On a scale of one to ten, how much pain do you feel?

Some days it’s the pain of a knife, some a sledgehammer;
some days it’s Mom’s recent death, others Papa’s
distant one. Is it the pain of breaking your mother’s
heart by leaving, or the pain of not going far enough?
It’s not the pain of bullets through the gut,
the crack of bone in a car crash, cattle prods applied
to the groin. Nor the pain of parents beaten
and shot, sisters pried apart, an automatic rifle
shoved into your hands. Is it the pain of a whack
on the head you didn’t see coming, or the punch
in the gut you did? The pain of separation, the pain
of regret, the pain of failure, the pain of hunger,
the pain of knowing your kids’ have their own
pain, and you are likely the cause. The pain of betrayal.
Someone you trusted with your life who took you up on it.

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An editor, writer, and poet, Charles Grosel lives in Arizona. He has published stories in Western Humanities Review, Red Cedar Review, Water-Stone, and The MacGuffin as well as poems in Slate, The Threepenny Review, Poet Lore, and Harpur Palate, among others. To pay the bills, Charles owns the communications firm, Write for Success.