the V.R.5 collapse: the ankle keeps its own barometer

The chronic injury reads the weather. Flat on the V.R.5 carpet, the one line that surfaces from the body itself is the ankle "throbb[ing] dully in the snowstorm's low pressure" — the damaged joint has become a standing instrument, registering the barometric drop the way the rest of him registers dread. The regimen's accumulated cost doesn't announce itself; it just aches, quietly, on schedule, whenever the pressure falls.