With ceremony comes the sweat

and all the questions of what to leave behind.

Set down your pain in recognition

that that heavy visitor, with tricks up its sleeve,

is simply

the pain,

looking for an identity.

If you’ve offered it one, you’ll know

because the pain has moved in and set up house,

happily snuggled behind a breast bone, or deep in the pelvis,

grateful to be held there in perpetuity.

The pain stays.

Suffering of any or every kind,

the pain translates easily from heartbreak

to backache–

ache being the tone of its song.

Pain will keep singing,

and your mouth is the one it uses

as if the voice belongs to you.

There are guests who need to be kicked out of the house,

might the pain be one of yours?