riding the waves

The pain wakes me,
swelling and rolling through me,
and then passing, as if it never was.

But another swell comes.
And another.

They come in waves,
these pains.
Each a little larger,
a little longer,
a little closer to the last,
until they leave me gasping.

Fingers clenching the back of a kitchen chair
as each new wave washes over me,
I watch the clock
and wait,
as long as I can.

Then we are passing trees, fields,
then houses, streetlights,
and the sky is beginning to lighten
as we reach the hospital.

And the pain goes on,
and on.

Wave after wave,
breaking over me now,
leaving me drenched in cold sweat.

Until finally,
riding the waves now,
an ocean bursts from me.

There is a cry,
as the last of that inner sea is coughed out,
and a first breath is taken.

And all the pain is,
if not forgotten,
irrelevant.

For the dVerse prompt “from a place of pain“, the challenge was to “revisit a time in your life when you have felt pain (emotional or physical, acute or chronic) and come out on the other side stronger.”  My previous post, written before the prompt, could have fitted it, but I didn’t want to revisit that. So I went the opposite direction. In several ways.