'Flash' writing anthology about chronic pain - submissions welcome!
by Miranda Cichy The year I grew tomatoes I had no understanding that my body was failing, how the plants needed more earth than I could give them, out in the yard on a concrete bed, hunkered in pots the size of my skull. I fed them too early, I forgot to […]
D is for Dysesthesia It’s also for dictionary. I’m very fond of mine. I was given it as a gift in 1993. Emblazoned on the front are the following statements: • The foremost dictionary of current English: now thoroughly revised and expanded • 120,000 entries and 190,000 definitions • Over 20,000 […]
Helplessness. It’s worse for me you know. You are only suffering but you do that every day. But every day I wake up and with the reddened sky I know that I can never help you. Hopelessness. It’s worse for me. You can imagine a cure or some relief though you know – you know […]
Waking up at 2am Neck locked again Tilt forward, searing pain Then snap, try to get back to sleep A morning spent studying Sat at a laptop, the pain spreads To my shoulders, I stretch Moving head and shoulders, crackle Late evening and writing is done I think I might be too I move and […]
by Sara Wasson U.K.
The difference between lowercase-p, pain, and uppercase-P, Pain, is huge. Bigger than just a shift-key should make it. The difference between “Yeah, let’s go on a hike today!” and “I can’t walk today.” The difference between pain that ends, and Pain that just backs off for a while. The difference between the morning pills and the afternoon […]
PAIN AND ITS KILLERS relief is an acceptable inevitable storm-head alarm that holds back its rain and mumbles thunder instead a hard-sell of cotton ignorance on the sofa that’s the world MOON the days hurt and the nights – well they’re a VHS video-nasty trembling on pause I only hope the the moon knows why […]
Anon. Germany
I am in the centre of nothing. Nothing cushions me. Nothing protects me I am comfortable surrounded by nothing Nothing is nice and kind and gentle. I am nobody in nothing I am special in nothing Nothing matters in nothing Nothing is everything I am nothing Nothing touches me I touch nothing Nothing moves me […]
A rookery, long abandoned now, had been built inside my body. I don’t know where the birds went or why, one day, they uninhabited, leaving only their barbed-wire residues, strung across the boughs of my hips; all sticks and spit, all hollows meant for holding something small, still desperately alive. I’m sorry – I’m afraid […]