The doctor explains it simply:
the pain is not in the leg.
The leg is gone.
The pain has relocated
to a safer office,
somewhere behind the eyes,
with better furniture.
I think of the house
where a stair was removed
years ago.
Everyone still lifts their foot there,
midair,
out of habit,
mid-thought.
The body is like that.
So is the neighbourhood.
So is the country.
You close a factory,
and people’s backs keep aching.
You erase a name from a book,
and mouths still bruise around it.
You redraw a border,
and the argument limps on,
dragging nothing behind it.
Pain does not respect maps.
It hates accuracy.
It prefers memory,
and old wiring.
I notice this when the smoke alarm
goes off for no reason.
Toast long gone,
kitchen calm,
yet the ceiling screams
as if something were still burning.
We reassure it.
We wave towels.
We tell it the fire is over.
The alarm continues,
committed to the idea
that danger once existed.
A man on the news says
the problem has been handled.
The statistics agree.
The screen cuts to a commercial.
Somewhere else,
a knee throbs
that no longer belongs
to anyone on screen.
You can remove the cause.
You can bury it.
You can even pass a law
declaring the limb unnecessary.
But the nervous system
keeps its own minutes.
It files carbon copies in a cabinet
no one finds the key to.
It sends reminders
at inconvenient hours.
This is why apologies arrive late.
Why prosperity hurts.
Why silence screams.
Why a country jumps
when nothing touches it.
I stub my toe
on a table we donated years ago.
I stand still,
waiting for the ache to understand.
It doesn’t.
It never does.
Pain, it turns out,
is very loyal.
Once hired,
it keeps showing up to work,
long after the building
told it to leave.
Scientific Context:
Pain has no location. It does not exist in the injured place—only in the brain. A leg can hurt after it is gone.
Majekodunmi O. Ebhohon is a Nigerian poet and playwright. He is the author of ‘The Great Delusion’, winner of the ANA Prize for Drama, 2025. He writes from Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria.
He can be reached via +234 (0) 9139208624, sankara101010@gmail.com
