'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, […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
Anon. 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 […]
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 […]