Translating Chronic Pain: Moments and Fragments

'Flash' writing anthology about chronic pain - submissions welcome!

Tag: loss (Page 3 of 4)

‘A Double Etheree on Living with M.E.’, by Linda Cosgriff

March 29, 2018 /

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 too well lived. He was a man out
of time. Now, there is nothing but
time. Resilient, he bears
it. He will not die. He
will suffer, always. 
He will not die. 
He does not,
cannot,
live.

 

  • by Linda Cosgriff

Author website

United Kingdom

‘In Stillness’, by D. Phoenix

March 16, 2018 /

The way the scent of the air changes as the day goes on: the warming sweetness of morning; the sharp resin of fir trees as the sun heats the day; the cool, soft evening air with the ground and lake and all the waving leaves mixed in. The way the early evening light strikes the birches and makes them chiaroscuro dramatic. The way my feet burn. The smudged charcoal underbellies of terns over the green water. Their sliding paths through the air. This deep, stabbing pain in both temples. The buzzing flight of sugar-fuelled hummingbirds. The way my entire body is filled with pain and unable to move from this chair. Heavily, here, just so. That bird, there, hopping from branch to branch. Almost hidden. The feel of my skin as a gentle breeze touches the side of my face. The things I long to do. That dragonfly, there, and the sun behind its wings. Every dancing leaf. The air again: changing.

  • by D. Phoenix

Canada

‘LIVE YOUR STORY’, by Katarina Juvancic

March 13, 2018 /

Maybe me still being here is as random as someone else dying. Maybe my decisions and actions only worked for me and cannot be replicated by anyone else. I honestly don’t know. My mind is dwarfed by life’s mysterious ways. … All I know for certain is that as much as I would like to live in a cancer-free world and help anyone who is struggling with the disease, all I can really do is to share my story. 

That is all I have to offer. A story. My story. And I would suggest that rather than copying mine or anyone else’s, make sure you’re comfortable with yours. Feel it. Articulate it. Own it. Live it. No matter how shitty you think it is. Because ultimately your story is the only thing that can and WILL help you deal with both – life and the loss of it.

Slovenia

 

‘Singing Bones’, by Katarina Juvancic

March 9, 2018 /
 Deeply submerged in the melancholy of the dying summer with my knees telling tales of the approaching cold and winter. My bones, surrounded with tumor necrosis cytokines causing acute and debilitating inflammation are dreading it. 

 

 This picture symbolises hope (sun) in the midst of winter. Trees are like bones.  

My body is a place of pain. My body is also a place of unutterable solitude, longing, and love. Love holding my cells in place. Love feeding them and helping them communicate better. I must find that place every time the system that keeps them in check collapses. I must remember it is here, all the time, ubiquitous and ever present. 
I need to embrace my disease and live with it as best as I possibly can. 
But most of all, I need to find a sustainable source of warmth and store it into my bones, so that they can sing songs of sun, warm breeze and golden evenings like this one all year round.

Slovenia

‘Collateral Damage’, by Ellie Conway

February 25, 2018 /

There is too much light
in the air today.
My eyelids won’t retreat; 
they’re the heavy squad,
repelling all invaders.
My protection
from a day too heavy

for me, 
for my chest, 
my arms.
my legs.

I can only lie 

down

beneath

its weight.

Breathing takes will.
Push, push the invisible hand
up, 
feel it press back 

down. 

Repeat.

and repeat.

Repeat again.

Muscles rebel.
Fibres tug against their tense kin,
stiffening, a shudder of spasms.
Nerve endings return fire, 
trajectory dipping from collarbone 
toward elbow 
past wrist 
till fingertips vibrate 

like 

plucked 

harp 

strings. 

breathe. 

breathe.

The throb, I ache.

My feet go AWOL – no – 
now they’re back with a burn.
Television assaults me, 
sound and vision launch

breathe.

combined assaults, 
attacking my senses.

My brain scrambles to keep up.

breathe.

In silence, the soft pillows embrace me.
I lean in.
Let them tend my wounds.

 

Scotland

‘Swans and Swallows’, by Mary Marie Dixon

February 23, 2018 /

(After Tennyson’s ‘The Dying Swan’)

In this wasting plain a
Wedge of swans
Tangle in water
So deep her eyes
In the gyring ferment

I am impotent
Warming blankets only burn
The stab

I cannot touch her
I cannot reach her
To this berth I cannot go
She writhes

White feathers
Drop around her bed
Swans wedge her in again
Swimming violently
Their bowing heads
Surface again

This churning of webbed feet
In water I cannot enter nor fathom
There is no present no past no future
Only some existence that is now and not now

She would wish to die
I would wish to die

Explicitly she does not wish to die
The room is swirling with the rotation of swans
Specters with no beauty
Shape-shifters leading to another world
No end no beginning
 
Still outside we hear
In thunder birds
A swirling of swallows

  • by Mary Marie Dixon

    United States

‘Hurting Haikus’, by Vanessa

February 22, 2018 /

A photograph taken by someone seated at the top of a small hill, showing their legs at rest.

 Eight months of pain, guilt.
Losing my movement slowly,
Affecting my work.Pain in my hip, back,
Encroaching on everything.
Physio: please help.Boss can’t understand,
Pretended it wasn’t bad.
I used to be fit.

Practicing patience,
Trying to be kind to self.
But some days that’s hard.


 

  • by Vanessa

[This image shows my legs in better times, when they were still able to take me on a 15 kilometre hike through the Rocky Mountains. Summer, 2017.]

 

Canada

‘Chime’, by Marion Michell

February 21, 2018 /

Lie in the car, stiff as a bell’s tongue, and just as mute. Pain in aspiration stage – still hoping I’ll hurl myself against walls, eager to chime.

After a blurry episode give looking another go. Burgess Park is not itself right now: tiny, lifeless, the green of grass and foliage moulded in the same garish tones. Clouds, birds, a plastic sun, tacked on a smudge of blue. We too minuscule and stuck mid-move in a scale-model some architect should have improved.

Bed, at long last. Limbs scattered like mikado sticks; palms so painful they seem large as cities. Must have crashed across the continent, one hand throbbing in Reykjavik, the other limp in the Aegean Sea. Each crumple in my sheet a mountain ridge or carved out canyon, nuzzling the gash of me. A chore to breathe.

Days shivering in sleety weather zones. I pine for hot. PEMalaise me not!

This image is a collage of two black and white photographs of a hand. The top half shows palm and slightly bent fingers horizontally, the bottom half vertically. The original was photographed in extreme light against white background, in order to achieve pronounced shadows. The latter appear more curved than the fingers themselves.

 

  • by Marion Michell

Blog and book: Sublimely Supinely

U.K.

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