M.E. destroys one life
and ruins more.
Fatigue replaces rage.
Accept it.
- by Linda Cosgriff
Author website
United Kingdom
Author: Sara Wasson (Page 7 of 11)
A
man is
ill. Whispered
recollections
of what he once was
are all that sustain him.
He has no hope. His aching
visions of what should have been kill
comfort. What could have been is a lie.
He has no hope. He has no future. He
has only now. Life took revenge for a
life too well lived. He was a man out
of time. Now, there is nothing but
time. Resilient, he bears
it. He will not die. He
will suffer, always.
He will not die.
He does not,
cannot,
live.
- by Linda Cosgriff
United Kingdom
Pain stitched into each
joint, he withers and fades. A
mutilated life.
- by Linda Cosgriff
United Kingdom
The way the scent of the air changes as the day goes on: the warming sweetness of morning; the sharp resin of fir trees as the sun heats the day; the cool, soft evening air with the ground and lake and all the waving leaves mixed in. The way the early evening light strikes the birches and makes them chiaroscuro dramatic. The way my feet burn. The smudged charcoal underbellies of terns over the green water. Their sliding paths through the air. This deep, stabbing pain in both temples. The buzzing flight of sugar-fuelled hummingbirds. The way my entire body is filled with pain and unable to move from this chair. Heavily, here, just so. That bird, there, hopping from branch to branch. Almost hidden. The feel of my skin as a gentle breeze touches the side of my face. The things I long to do. That dragonfly, there, and the sun behind its wings. Every dancing leaf. The air again: changing.
- by D. Phoenix
Canada
If pleasure is the absence of pain,
then pain comes first.
In the planter outside my front door,
a wren’s nest whorls down
to darkness. The nestlings chirr when I pass by,
or when the wind’s fingers brush too close,
as if the wind and I are mothers,
returning with meat, as if refreshed
sensation means relief from pain,
meaning pain comes last –
like a shadow, sleek and well-fed,
or a body’s imprint in the bed.
I grow to love you, dear familiar.
- by Michele Leavitt Author website
United States
generate
stay
slow
seal
here
- by Sean Medium
Belgium
For some of us the universe is a dark pit, where pain finds its home, nesting and laying eggs of destruction. The whole life reduced to this crumbled, shrank, shelled body of pain. It takes over your whole existence. Nothing can keep the pain at bay at this point, not even your best “mind-over-matter” efforts or hardest of drugs. It is torturing your soul and crippling your body. Overwhelming and ubiquitous. An epitome of Alone. A hungry demon.
It claims you when you are too exhausted to fight. Now it has me in its claws, roaring like a wild beast, feasting on my bones, chewing my sanity and spitting out my dignity. I am too weak to resist. My presence is ethereal and fragile. I am not really here any more. I do not live anymore. I merely exist. And that is more humiliating and dehumanising than being dead.
- by Katarina Juvancic Author’s website: www.katarina-dejan.com/en
Slovenia
Disease is a discord, friction, dissonance, a flatted fifth every righteous composer wants to avoid, but hearing it in music it makes the tune much more interesting and edgy.
So, no, I don’t really believe in controlling or managing a disease as something external, as a bank account, or as a puppy that needs to be trained to fetch, sit and bark whenever you think it’s appropriate; or a dissonant chord that needs to be rewritten so that a tune can sound neat again.
What I believe you can do is try to understand it, understand yourself and your disease without being intimidated by the managerial narrative, economic discourse or regimen requirements. Embrace it as a part of you that needs to be heard, and healed. And dance to its tune, even if others can’t hear music in this messy noise, and even if your back is stiff as hell.
- by Katarina Juvancic
Author’s website
Slovenia
Maybe me still being here is as random as someone else dying. Maybe my decisions and actions only worked for me and cannot be replicated by anyone else. I honestly don’t know. My mind is dwarfed by life’s mysterious ways. … All I know for certain is that as much as I would like to live in a cancer-free world and help anyone who is struggling with the disease, all I can really do is to share my story.
That is all I have to offer. A story. My story. And I would suggest that rather than copying mine or anyone else’s, make sure you’re comfortable with yours. Feel it. Articulate it. Own it. Live it. No matter how shitty you think it is. Because ultimately your story is the only thing that can and WILL help you deal with both – life and the loss of it.
- by Katarina Juvancic
Author’s Website
Slovenia
Fibromyalgia
My body drinks in the harsh cold of winter
Setting my bones on fire
Hands ball up into blotched white fists
Suddenly and viciously
A message travels down
My over over sensitive nerves
Sending fingers shooting out
Dead straight
Rigor morticed with pain
Liquid churns hot in my spasming bowels
Limp sprinting to the bathroom
I watch through open legs
As blood drips into the toilet bowl
A crimson red rose blooms
Then slowly dissolves
I am a clockwork toy
Wound too tight
The obsessions I tidied away
Are coming out of their boxes
Quicker than a child’s presents at Christmas
- by Zara Carpenter
United Kingdom
