so long with sickness
can make a man sick

permanently sick,
sick more with sickness
than the disease itself,
a poison that lives in your blood,
in your veins, which engrains deeper
with each beat of your heart,
each thought in your mind
becomes toxic, sick,
but you become used to it;
so much in pain
you hardly notice it any more
constantly on the edge of a breakdown
fearful of everything, fearful of yourself,
and that, that is the illness
I’ve been living with
for so long now,
I hardly knew what it was like
to live without it

my limbs are light
my mind jittery with the lifted
weight

what now? I wonder

everything,
I suppose.