Doppler effect

The pain in my right hip
first whispered to me fifteen years ago.
Attention!, this pain, who is female, said.
I pretended she wasn't there
and went on about my business.
I chose to exercise my pain-ignoring skills
in one more instance
even as her whispers grew to shrieks.

I stepped out one night a week back
onto the concrete back stoop
forgetting the ice sheet
and slammed down hard on my right hip.
I lay there alone under the porch light, wrist throbbing.
Is this it? I wondered, I'm only 53
and the child is coming back into my face
after some unfortunate years.
It's too soon, too soon.

But then I stood and walked
and considered the hairline fracture
widening over time, like Grandma's.
Her sister Great-aunt Ila flew out
from Minneapolis that year
and the two old ladies with their broken hips
were chauffered in matching wheelchairs
around Descanso Gardens.
After twenty more years they died
ten days and fifteen hundred miles apart.

Pain chortles: I have your attention now.