I haven’t bled in five months. Each time this happens I wonder, am I done? Was that it? Have I finally crossed the threshold into after, whatever that means?

It’s going on thirty-six years, yet I still argue with the thing. While walking in the neighborhood, I sketch out plans for a new beginning that will free me from the past. Or, say, I think that I will not think about it, but end up not fully admitting to consciousness the trauma surrounding what seems to have snowballed into its own life-form. A mass of pain is located in my lumbar spine—I know the discs leak fluid, though the last MRI showed bulges but no actual herniation.