Diabetes

No vicious handful of pain,
no breakbeat shatter of nerves when I step,
no cautious calculation of what I’ve eaten, in fact
no need to calculate at all beyond 
deciding whether or not I’m full:

I imagine life before diabetes
was something else,
if only I could remember.

It’s like recalling life
before I was born.
I know it happened
but I was different then.
Another form. Another body.

I’m doing fine in most ways
but every time I cringe 
and twinge, each time
I blast the naked nerves of my feet,
every time I cannot feel
a bottle cap, every clumsy second 
when I manage to turn a knob by pushing through 
the unnatural numbness in the fingers,

I realize I cannot imagine anymore
the time when none of these acts 
would have registered
as momentous.