Let me make this very clear
This is not your pain
You cannot take this from me and ball it up into something you can wish away
God is not going to fix this
I am the sock that God forgot on the clothes line
God forgot and moved away

It takes seven pills for my brain to work like it’s supposed to
That was my Christmas wish from the hospital in fifth grade
I didn’t want to be called to the nurse every day
I didn’t want the hours of intake papers and waiting rooms
I didn’t want my dresser to be covered in pill bottles
Everyone thinks my room is a mess
It probably is

Dear Mom,
Please send ibuprofen
The off brand gel caps that don’t make me sick
I promise I am still listening to the doctors
I love you

God made miracles and God made mountains and God made mistakes
Let him rip the steroids out of my veins and make me human again
Not this half cyborg, half dead, half human
Mostly bad at math...
Let me be whole again
This is a ****** prayer

The first time I went to the hospital without my dad
My doctor told me how composed I was in the waiting room
Are you kidding me?
You can’t cry while you rattle off the pain killers you’ve taken
But you can miss your therapy dog like you miss the leg you left tangled up in your bed sheets this morning
The last time you remember your foot on the ground was last night
The last time you were an entire person, all of your nerves were working

When I moved out, I did not just leave home
I left a healthcare network
I left a system where I didn’t have to repeat myself like a list of diagnoses

Remission for me was funny where it meant almost nothing
It was a noncommittal guarantee that I was O.K right then
And the day after I finally heard it from my doctor,
I wasn’t

So as a little bit of a letter to the people who think I take too much medication
Because I don’t look sick enough
If you could give me back any of he days I spent in hospital beds or urgent care or waiting rooms
If you could repay my mother for all of the days she spent worrying about me living on my own
If you could take back all of the time my father took off work to take me to doctor’s appointments, I would let you
I have wasted so much time believing that I am tissue paper melting in the hailstorm of a mistake my body can’t stop making
You have no say.

Let’s **** God

We made a game out of it
Who can make it to heaven hiding a pistol in their sock
What can you hide from God? What silver bullet?
What radiation?
What rage slowly leaking out of our veins and into the soil

I am that one night stand that God wants to dissolve in ethanol
So here I am running out of his apartment while he is still asleep
I’m late for work,
I’ve lost a shoe

My friend took medication
He said it helped but he went to bed crying

Dear Mom,
Please send Ibuprofen
I promise I’m listening to the doctors,
I love you

We just wanted to ask God what test was worth this
We felt worthless
My body gave up in the hospital bed
I left my arm tangled up in the sheets
I left part of myself on the waiting room floor
The first time it snowed in Atlanta
The one time we said grace before dinner

God made miracles and God made mountains and God made mistakes
Let him rip the steroids out of my veins and make me human again
Not this half cyborg, half dead, half human
Mostly bad at math...
Let me be holy again
This is a ****** prayer

This is poison
He wanted to **** God with poison,
Slowly, like when he was afraid my liver would rot
I had dreams about my feet growing necrotic
He held my hand
It wasn’t enough

The first time I went to the hospital without my dad
My doctor told me how composed I was in the waiting room
Are you kidding me?
You can’t cry while you rattle off the pain killers you’ve taken
You can’t cry while you try to make peace with anything that might make this stop
Stop

Stop listening!
This silence is sickening
He isn’t there
If he ever was, he left us like socks hanging on a clothesline
God forgot and moved away
Nobody bought the house
You stepped in quick sand and we’re stuck here because I will not leave you
But we have been left alone

God is a force I cannot believe in
But I keep getting told that he’s watching me anyways
So I still pray
Dear God, let my father get home safely
Dear God, guide my little sister
Dear God,
Good luck getting my hair out of your shower

I’m going to relapse tomorrow.
So I’m going to breathe in this moment where I am not in pain
I am going to touch and feel and understand right now
Because I can,
Right now, for the next few hours, I can be an entire human being

I’m going to relapse tomorrow
You’d think it’d be relieving to get a warning inscribed in your genetics,
Building patterns,
To “prepare”
But I cannot be prepared to open my eyes in the morning and see television static
To get out of bed and leave my arm behind
To fall off the leg that can’t hold my weight anymore

I’m going to relapse tomorrow
All I do is dread the pseudo-pain that creeps in when I can see again
You want to talk about fake?
Talk about nurses blowing veins
Talk about nightmares about hospital gowns
Talk about being afraid to ask for a seat on the subway because your illness isn’t real enough

I’m going to relapse tomorrow because that’s how this goes
This in and out like the ocean got angry again
Like I will never run marathons
You can’t run on a numb ankle
You can’t run on exhaustion and giving up
I can’t run on missed birthday parties

I’m going to relapse tomorrow, and I’m terrified
Because I’ve given up on my body before
Because the rest of the world can touch without pins and needles
The rest of the world runs on people can run constantly
I’ve been rusty since age seven,
I was built like an iphone
Meant to break and be thrown away so you’ll buy a new one

I know that I’m going to relapse tomorrow. I know, I know, I know,
I know.

I didn’t see you after I left that day
I didn’t give you the chance
I thought I had thought about it, but I left you on a blank page
I think of you filling it with questions but no answers

I always thought that it hurt to leave
But I wonder if it hurt to be left
When you came back looking for closure
And I turned you away, looking for ending

I’m startled by curiosity
I regret not knowing if you ever turned a page
If you read on
If you missed me
And I think it’s strange that I wanted to be missed

So I have to look back at you through photographs
There aren’t many, we were kids
I can’t understand your life now because I can’t remember it then
My parents wrote you off as some phase I needed to get over

Your heart beats somewhere now with someone else
And I hate you, because sometimes
I still wish it were me

Sometimes we run.
Sometimes not fast enough
to escape our problems.

But sometimes we run so
fast we forget to slow
down and enjoy our gift.

Darkness has beauty.
Or light shining in the dark
has special beauty