The chaos of pain in every moment
Inside me
Playing its jarring jazz
Impromptu – No set list
Whilst I exist amongst you
Cloaked I normalcy
- by Sara Elgerot
Sweden
Tag: invisibility (Page 2 of 5)
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
Four walls,
Four walls and me,
Four walls a fistful of pills and me,
Silence
Surrounded by silence,
The silence that reminds me me myself and I.
Except you,
You’re never silent,
The voice that never stops,
The endless alarm that disturbs my slumber,
You rattle round my brain in whispers and shouts until I scream.
Then I’m heard,
Outside of this box,
Outside of this cell walls have ears who swallow my words,
And even photographs in frames refuse to listen,
Because I have no voice.
- by Wayne Roberts
UK
I drew this while lying down in bed during a ME/CFS relapse and Fibromyalgia flare-up that has seen me housebound and sometimes bedridden. It describes the location of some of the pain in my body and how sore it feels. The image also embodies my sense of feeling trapped as a result of my disability, and of having my potential and freedom thwarted. I had the feather to hand because my husband brings me items from outside: The use of a found object is symbolic of my being housebound and detached from the natural world. It also represents a disconnect from the life I’d rather be leading if I were well enough. The image is visceral and disturbing, and it reflects the distressing and very physical symptoms I can experience.
- by Paula Knight
Paula Knight’s site ‘Chronic Creations’
Twitter: @Paula_JKnight
Instagram: @paukajkstudio
UK
When the pain goes I half suppose my flesh marked, transformed. A growth of lichen, say, with its warm turmeric tint; a layer of cool, silvery fish-scales; traces of the glacial burn of chain-mail melting into skin. Best of all a delicate, graceful articulation of relief on the site of its worst excesses: once the sharp, piercing jolts give over to prickling, tingling sensations (as if the top of my skull were open or at least porous), the tiniest, downiest feathers could unfurl in the round, a bit like a peacock’s crest – thin stalks topped with trembling blowballs.
But there is nothing, not a wound, not a bruise, not even the flushed tone of a limb pressed against the mirror, straining elsewhere.
(A small crochet work, of a shiny ochre hue, is laid out on a piece of white paper. Dense stitches amass around an empty centre, as if framing a face, becoming looser and looser and turning into ever wider swinging loops. A bit like Medusa’s serpent hair, only less dangerous. In the empty centre, where, were it a face, the mouth would be, lies a small pink square of paper with a black circle from which a thin line protrudes, describing a marker, or corner, or the beginnings of an arrow.)
- by Marion Michell
SUPINELY SUBLIMELY (Book)
Blog
Art
United Kingdom
She asks if it’s raining outside while she takes my blood pressure. I ask if I should take my shoes off before I stand on the scales. Sharp scratch, she says before she slides in the needle. Four vials of blood, all with sticky labels. I take the foil plate into the cubicle, slip on the purple latex gloves. My name is printed on the side of the plastic tube. The body makes the slow transition to data.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how painful are your joints? I try to measure my pain. She presses on my knee and I gurgle, spit out my tongue. My body is unmarked, conceals the grinding of bones. No sign of swelling here, she says. Writes it down. Ghost-bodied, I float somewhere on an interface, alongside the sick. Sleeping whales suspended in the blue. We sing the numbers of our suffering.
- by Jane Hartshorn
Scotland
Worst days pain ricochets like shooting stars with pinball crushes. Oh the love! Releases fiery goo when ramming rib, tooth, bone. Skull reels alone; body razed by frequent flyer flares, flags pushed here there, declaring consternation zones. Each smart begets another, emulates, and brass bands march in new-laid grooves, playing their loudest, most discordant tunes. Strangely breasts score synchronicity, pressed hard against the faces of two grinning clocks (hands colliding, clouding time). Neither words nor image until pacified.
- by Marion Michell
Blog https://supinesublime.wordpress.com
Book SUPINELY SUBLIMELY
UK
you sit in my throat like a stone in shoe
eyes dry as bone. bones hurt.
why cry?
these days that feel different but all so same.
little belly wrenches all the time as though to be freed from something
tonsils i should rip them from my neck. daft neck
neck forever stiff
but why should neck feel at ease when i remain so needlessly static
lose my reasons every day
and think of new
you div
ask yourself what time it is. what day
become like a teddy bear.
apples hurt my mouth but i still eat them.
how life is unfair.
why must i scratch my skin?
not fair on you
to have everything
daffodils. i used to kick their heads off. weak.
it follows me round everywhere.
what’s the point in being alive when you’re dead
how can you sleep when you’re wet
wet
- by Blair James
United Kingdom
