Too young to understand,
Too scared to stay
- by RachDoesDesign
Wales
[The image features a form with chaotic hair spanning the entirety of the piece, lines and dots show the chaos of the mind]
Tag: hardship (Page 1 of 3)
The skin I wear
The skin I wear is a covering
for my bones and flesh
and I’m glad it holds it in
but wonder sometimes
why and sigh
about the pain I’m in.
It’s not as if I’ve fallen
or didn’t watch where I was going,
I was plodding on quite well I thought
and tried to do what I’d been taught –
I enjoyed it all in a way.
Can I use a vacuum cleaner?
Why do you ask? I used to
work full time and be the breadwinner
and I can’t help wondering whether
you would have asked that of a man.
I can somehow think you know
I’m still here in a way,
I think so, anyway.
- by Wendy Jones
Wales
Hello pain let’s dance!
Hello pain let’s dance together
and cry a melody
Just you and me forever
which dance is it to be?
A boogie or a waltz
a tango or some jiving?
Whatever the rhythm
It’s time to do some living
The violinist’s bow
hews across its strings
The drummer’s sticks do beat
upon his drum
sweet notes emanate
a squeezing heartache
Across the room
A trumpet sighs do come
She moves her body slow
To the echo of the bow
The rhythm of the beat
Won’t knock her down
Her back she keeps it straight
And feet they will not wait
But trip along and step
The bright life into town
She feels a country breeze
That puts her at her ease
Her spirits rise until they fly away
Birdsong in the trees
Falling from their leaves
And butterflies are coming out to play.
- by Wendy Jones
Wales
More information: https://poetryatnightblog.wordpress.com/
It’s 2am and my body is on fire. Every cell is boiling. Sweat creeps from my pores. It only takes a moment to soak through my favourite t-shirt, then through the sheets and mattress covered in yellow imprints.
I can’t get any fucking sleep. This happens to me every night, up to ten times. Then 40 times a day, no matter the season.
I’m a comedian, but it’s near impossible to make people laugh when my body is transforming against my will. When I’m furious about an illness 50% of the population will never experience while the other 50% will understand it 20+ years after me. Isolated because no doctor out of my team of 7 can determine exactly why it is I went into menopause at 28. Depressed because they know little about a condition that under 1% of the female population develops.
This is my life now.
- by S. L. Shuter
Canada
From our window, the clouds seemed static, frozen. Orange-and-green taxicabs drove through the slush six floors down. Tilly whimpered, buzzed for the nurse, asked for Dilaudid, whispered “good morning.” Swaddled in her sheets, she breathed hard. Phenolic air. She asked me how I was feeling. We lolled in our beds, our mothers asleep in their wooden chairs, wrapped in winter coats, their heads dangling crooked.
Tilly and I began our daily walk—we could only ever circle the floor twice. We linked arms, dragged IV poles with our free hands. The hospital hallway was long, off-white, off-world, a nearly invisible trail of half-existence. Fluorescent light faked endless daytime. Supposedly, there is also no night in heaven. With every step, that sorry tube stabbed me deeper in the gut like a helpless thief. Blood drained downward into a bag wrapped around my knee. My insides, bared to all who passed by.
- by Mariana Gurgis
Canada
My grandma had 7300 sleepless nights
Until a Shanghai doctor said
‘You have restless legs’
Pills prescribed
Leaflet read,
Pramipexole Hydrochloride
The 1st good night’s sleep
In the 7301 nights.
- by Xie Licheng
UK
Pain is a pre-requisite to Creation. Take for example the process of bringing forth life. Albeit it is a painful process, nevertheless, it is also a glorious creation. History stands testimony to the fact that all the great ones who ever walked the Earth have
risen to great heights walking through the aisle of pain. “Love till it hurts” is the beautiful message bequeathed to us by Mother Teresa. I consider myself fortunate to have known a few “chosen” ones who have borne the cross of their lives with a brave heart.
Their lives have made me understand the significance of the maxim of “Grace Under Pressure “. Living in the proximity of pain, at this watershed moment of my life, I endeavour to explore the uncharted realm of Metaphysics and as I inch towards it silently,
I experience the power of the Void in my own quaint way.
- by Suchitra Awasthi
UK/India
- Anon.
Germany
It wouldn’t be fair to say the ache starts
every morning as I wake.
Or truthfully that I wake at all,
more I become conscious… of the pain.
The fire started small and young.
Fickle flickering up my spine.
Across my shoulders like a seasoned log,
spreading further, faster as I age.
It took hold.
It ravaged me, left me weak and wincing.
Scared to stretch my body,
as if it would elongate my pain.
The ache doesn’t care how I adjust.
Turn this hip, rest this hand, lift this leg.
To chase it out of one limb just moves it,
across the map of my body.
It doesn’t listen to the pills.
Signals sent to block it in my brain.
It weaves its way round them,
conniving and wheedling itself into my synapses.
- by Kitty Frilling
Author website: www.kittyfrilling.co.uk
United Kingdom
When he was dying, I swallowed a CoCodamol before bedtime as if it were hot chocolate. I craftily attributed my zen-like calm in the face of helping Dad as he pissed blood into a plastic pot at 3am – I don’t know what’s happening to me, he said, again and again – to my sensible study of The Tibetan Book of The Dead. It was a lie, but a lie that helped.
- by Libby R.
Author website: The Diary I Didn’t Write
U.K.
