'Flash' writing anthology about chronic pain - submissions welcome!
Where does it even start?
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know
How can I tell each apart?
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know
Where does it even end?
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know
Why isn’t my body my friend?
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know
USA
Pain permeates her dreams,
Seeps into this anaemic morning.
Sucking breath to unhinge each joint
stuck fast through the cramp of night.
The bathroom is an agony away,
Tender feet must scrape each step while
Wincing fingers trace the rails along
her jagged journey.
Tap turners levered by cankered wrists
bring the gush and plunge of warm water,
A pure moment of relief.
Her baby wakes in a scream of urgency
unanswered by her stumbling mother
who struggles to dress herself,
To start another day.
Soon her child will grow to patience,
Learn wisdom beyond her years,
Wait, while snaps and buttons
are fastened with fragile hands
And desperate cuddles given,
cringed with wrinkling pain.
For further information see: arthritiscare.org.uk
United Kingdom
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.
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.)
SUPINELY SUBLIMELY (Book)
Blog
Art
United Kingdom
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.
Blog https://supinesublime.wordpress.com
Book SUPINELY SUBLIMELY
UK
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 pierce
the container holes
and June drowned them.
You can try too hard
to care for something,
and I watched through
the dusty window
as the summer shifted,
as my body took
a spade to itself, dug
and re-dug, broke
roots until the soil was raw.
Good days unfurl
in bad years
like yellow flowers, sometimes
the fruit does set. But
the tomatoes I picked
were swollen, their faces
multiplied, the seeds like grit,
stems bending from the sticks
that were meant to hold them up.
United Kingdom
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 – that that will never come. All I want is for your pain to go away for ever. And you know please know that’s not the same as not wanting you here forever. Look into my eyes, please look into my eyes and please, please don’t show me pity.
Germany
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
I know only my own dark canopy,
its filtering bones of light.
UK
Work as hard as you can
for as long as you can
Then you’re ill
can’t work
can’t walk
can’t bear talk
or remember how no pain felt
can count on the hand you can’t lift
your friends
and family
can’t work
or provide
can’t afford pride
or holidays
you manage Christmas, on plastic
can’t walk your children to school
it’s uphill
you’re ill
can’t work
can’t live
can’t provide –
the part that was you
the man that was you
the pride in you
died
Try not to care
that the love of your life
is no longer your wife
but your carer
Work as hard as you can
for as long as you can
United Kingdom
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