Elephantitis of the legs,
Lymphostatic ballooning.
Your protein filled, fluid logged limbs
Are too heavy for your frame,
Too massive for a guy. Early 30’s.
The pain in those legs,
Doppler’s don’t begin to explain.
Rule out DVT, sure.
But to cancel the shame, the guilt,
A therapeutic dose would be nice.
Revealing your feet,
A blush matches erythematous calves,
“My nails are ugly,
You’ll have to help me get my socks back on”
Words not easily muttered.
30+ yrs is too young for this.
The keratinized curls,
Grey brown with month, maybe years.
Speak louder than you do –
Beneath a cap pulled low.
As if obesity. Morbid. Isn’t enough.
The nails thick and gnarled,
Capture time, family strain,
An EtOH infused childhood.
They speak to a terror,
Of body weights estimated with a trucking scale.
Beneath the elephantitis above,
These toes subtle markers.
Of what is going on beneath,
Beyond lymphatics, dopplers, hypertrophic skin.
Sometimes it’s the basics,
Simplicity assumed.
That reflect humanness, suffering.
The real elephants in the room.