This poem is pretty weird, as it relates to my husband having to go through regular x-rays, and every time I sit in the waiting area, I find myself wondering about the technician! Who are they beneath the scrubs and the neutral smile? What are they thinking when they gently position a person who's hurting, or when they see something that might change someone's life? Are they secretly longing for adventure?
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Every day I stare through skin and shadow,
finding fractures like riddles left behind by lives I’ll never know,
the quiet trail of cracks that tell of falls, of fights, of fears no one says out loud,
and I wonder if they see me as just a technician, just a blur at the edge of their pain,
never knowing that I once believed I was meant for a quest,
that I used to dream of canyons and lanterns glowing with forgotten magic.
I keep a photograph in my locker,
two women on horseback with a torch raised against the dusk,
the canyon breathing around them like it was alive and listening,
and every time I press the cold plate to someone's back,
I hear that old longing flare again,
like a whisper sewn into the hum of the machine.
The serenity I imagined in ancient places,
in ruins where spells once settled like dust,
now feels more like the quiet between scan results,
the hush before someone asks, “Is it bad?”
and I have to answer with only my silence.
Adventure, I have learned, is not always flame and wonder,
sometimes it is holding still
while everything inside you wants to run.
About the Creator
Diane Foster
I’m a professional writer, proofreader, and all-round online entrepreneur, UK. I’m married to a rock star who had his long-awaited liver transplant in August 2025.
When not working, you’ll find me with a glass of wine, immersed in poetry.
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More stories from Diane Foster and writers in Poets and other communities.
The Day I Stopped Romanticizing My Pain
For a long time, I believed my pain made me interesting. It gave my stories weight, my voice depth, my silence meaning. I wore it quietly, like a badge only other wounded people could recognize. When something hurt, I didn’t run from it—I wrote about it. I turned it into metaphors. I dressed it in beautiful words so it would look intentional instead of unbearable.
By Imran Ali Shah4 days ago in Poets
Comments (3)
To take the pictures & see that they are taken well, but never to interpret them for those from whom they've been taken, is indeed to journey down paths of mystery & peril.
I did not find this weird at all. This is fantastic! I want to hug this person - you made them so deep and tangible with so few lines. It's beautiful, their longing, and the silent witness they are to other's pain. I happen to know an x-ray tech, and he's pretty fabulous but does long for more time for adventures. They run those people ragged!
Well-wrought! Especially those final lines! There is way more inner space than outer space, that's for sure. One could climb all the mountains in the world and stlll not have explored one small part of the infinite depths within. Yet each leads to the other in its Way.