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… Continue Reading ‘She asks if it’s raining outside’, by Jane Hartshorn
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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.… Continue Reading ‘Shooting stars’, by Marion Michell
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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… Continue Reading ‘NIGHT SWEATS’, by Blair James
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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… Continue Reading ‘Nothing’, by Una Sombra
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The television I bought five years ago sits in the corner of my room. It helped me through those morphine nights where my lung drain, like a sick umbilical cord snagged from my side. I would watch Countdown at 3 a.m., clasping the puppetry of sign language like a charm. by Jacqueline Woods Write… Continue Reading ‘When the stars threw down their spears’, by Jacqueline Woods
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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… Continue Reading ‘The Cost of Falling Ill’, by Linda Cosgriff
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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… Continue Reading ‘A Double Etheree on Living with M.E.’, by Linda Cosgriff
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Pain stitched into each joint, he withers and fades. A mutilated life. by Linda Cosgriff Author website United Kingdom
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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… Continue Reading ‘First and Last’, by Michele Leavitt
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