Mrs Carson always was my favorite math teacher,

She was kind, yet ferocious. You couldn’t miss a lesson.

So when the stabbing pain began, I sat strong at my desk.

My ribs curled over the spike being driven in my side.

I slammed my fist into the desk, taking a deep breath in.

Just the one class, that’s all I needed to make it through.

My eyes didn’t wander from the board but my mind yelped,

The equations tip toeing around the constant feeling of nausea.

Finally we saw it was time to go, I hobbled as fast as I could.

Stepping out of our temporary card board trailer, I fled down the metal walk way.

My mind fell blank to be greeted by a nurse in the ER.

Kidney stones lay stuck in my side. No sign of when they’d be out.

All I had to rely on were prescription pain killers, the light kind.

They turned the stabs into dull flicks, knives into rubberbands.

Then there I was again, in Mrs. Carson’s room, ready for a lesson.

Yet the fog, so hazy kept my mind polluted. The numbers fading from thoughts entirely.

There was no fighting this, the drug ran deep in my veins.

More than a week had passed before I was free,

Broken up into dust, the stones had left.

Back in that cardboard trailer my mind was finally clear,

Only still, a week behind in all my fields.