Every inch of my body is screaming, blazed with fire
There's lightning between my shoulder blades
Rain dripping from my dewy greens
And electricity weaving between my tendons

There is a chainsaw cutting my bones
There are needles piercing through my chest
There is lava rushing through my veins
There is a hurricane in my head

I can feel my cells shrinking
I can feel my branches breaking
I can feel my leaves crumbling

Everything hurts and there is no remedy
This is the life of inevitable misery

I feel as if my head is sliding off my neck like ice cream melting down the cone. I am a witch melting, shrinking smaller as my spine stacks horizontally like shiplap. My body has been refurbished into a pinball machine. Something so tiny as a silver ball destroys so much. It bullets through my body, shooting off like Cuban missiles. I feel the turmoil and chaos seeping through the gutters of this old home of bones. It's like spilled oil sludging through my blood vessels or rats scattering through a sewer, nibbling and feasting away on these muscles of mine until they are frayed like gnawed-on cable wires. At odd hours of the night when time is propelled by the safe travels of breath (that weave in and out like Victorians at a ball) from sleepy children who have yet been touched by monsters or nymphs, whereas each of my breaths steer Odysseus's weather-beaten boat through ten years of treachery. My heavy, melting head slowly sloping like clay off a bust makes its home on my dingy pillow as I lay on a prison bed with cold shackles around my ankles that make my bones shatter into a mosaic as if that could shrink my ankles so I can slip out. I feel like a chained hawk at these hours of the night when I just want to fly until I screech to a halt and flail over the cliff that waterfalls into the ends of the universe. I'd be reluctant at first, perhaps, but what other escape does one have other than to make an autopsist's Y-incision on one's body, then slip out like a hermit crab freeing himself from his heavy shell? Embarking onto a new dimension where there's hope for a radical swap of atoms that don't shape a crippled, deteriorating human is the only choice when you want to live a life other than what you were cursed with. May we then find peace and live as naked souls bearing no heavy shells.

Sometimes I believe my body is cursed
When I am burdened with all this pain
Wearing my disability like a bright, red stain
I think ahead to many years when it’ll be worse
When I can’t pick up a pen or unbutton my shirt
Or finish school or start a career
When more and more limitations start to appear
Sometimes I believe my body is cursed

Today it is ok to hold
Your body at pause
Suspend your animation temporarily let your bones keep
Their shape in peaceful unity to
Breathe in gentle air
Tomorrow
Tomorrow,
The big wide world will
Still be out there.

A harsh wind is blowing
Whistling and shrieking down
The peeks and ridges of our collective anxiety
Only live, only hope
I look at you often
Stare into the corners of your eyes and I catch
The tears that shine there
I examine your fingers wrapped
Over and around mine
The thumb that I labeled perfect
My own little spiders tucked under
The warm shelter of your solid bones.
We are two, you and I, but really we are one.
Farther than the sun
Way past the reaches of stars.
Deeper than the ocean.
You sink into my heart and I try to commit your face to a memory that can only exist while there is a vessel.
But no matter the Galaxy Path I am destined to take
The string remains.
This love Is Unmovable.

I was a new-born when you promised
You would carry me anywhere I wanted
And at any time I wanted,
You promised me safety
You promised me freedom.

Dedicated and deceptive
You had teased me growing up
But I never would have predicted
How malicious you could be
You fooled everyone, even me.

Parts of you were destroyed
But you always found other ways
To stick out, ugly and obscene
You screamed at me, you harassed me
And everyone else recoiled.

You were ruthless, relentless,
I needed your permission to leave
On the worst days I could do nothing
But lie there and seethe.

You were always there waiting,
Until I was distracted, to capture me
Trapping me in a time loop dimension
Loop after loop after loop;
Like an elaborate knot.

My tongue no longer tasted
My humanity began to rust
Like a corpse and its restless ghost
I was dormant but deprived of sleep
How could I rest under your glare?

Like a deranged anaesthetist
You forced me to the very edge
I hung over that abyss, wondering
If you would let my hand go, or pull me up
Until boredom struck again

Amidst the beeping and droning machines
Serpentine, you still twisted around me
Pungent disinfectant; the white-room scent
And the pointed metal tips
Their shrieking tongues turned to monotone.

Well, organs and cells,
I had long outgrown you and
Your demented, slothful ways
What did we have in common
Anymore aside from me?

But we are bound like conjoined twins
As fused together as can be
I’d die without you, you’d die without me
I aim to live in harmony with you
And help you gain a much sunnier hue.

I wish my lotion had glitter in it
I also wish my head didn't hurt
I had a nightmare that I was back in the hospital the day my insurance company denied my medication
I can't afford it,
So I can't sleep now
But yesterday I dreamed I was back in the hospital like when I was a kid
I was only there a couple of times, for testing and for times I forgot my medication
There was a bit of a learning curve for a seven year old
But I'm moving out next year
I've already learned
I take my vitamins, I go to my doctor visits
I finally got my sports clearances,
But I can't drive a car without my medication
I can't work somedays either
So as I lay here, by myself, I can't help but remember the nurse who gave me a friendship bracelet in the emergency room on Christmas
The saline in my arm was cold, and they stopped giving me blankets because I had a fever
I was twelve years old and it was snowing in Atlanta for the first time in years
I couldn't tell from my windowless room
The nurse put lotion on my hands with glitter in it
I had a fever because I was dehydrated
I was dehydrated because I forgot my medication at home in Pennsylvania.

You have become an all to familiar presence in my life. From the wave of incompetence that often washes over me as soon as I wake up, to the heavy ache that nuzzles itself beside me as I sleep – you are the unwanted intruders that force themselves into the comfort of my being.  You haunt me with my own thoughts, and use my fears and insecurities against me.  Time and time again you feed me lies by telling me that I am not worthy  - that I am not good enough for success or deserving of love.  Sometimes you even tease me by leaving for a short while, giving me a small glimpse of freedom - only to quickly return with new and more powerful tricks up your sleeve.

Together you are the dichotomy that makes it absolutely impossible to get through even the most remedial of tasks.  Anxiety, you keep me awake at night by preying on my paranoia, causing me to obsess over every stupid mistake I have ever made, and reminding me of all the things that I have not done.  All the while, Depression you cast your cloud upon me by keeping me in bed all day, and telling me that nothing matters anyway.  This unrelenting battle in my mind puts me in a state of frantic melancholy – constantly sending me to the brink of madness.  Learning to understand how to live with you is like learning how to live in a body that is not mine.

You are the wildfire that will stop at nothing to destroy every sign of life within its path, and I am the blackened remnant of a forest.  Gasping for breath in oxygen depleted air – I desperately cling onto the slightest bit of life I can find.  I fight to gain control over this insanity.  I will not let you win.

I will not let you win because you do not get to define how I live.  You seek to **** quietly and without notice but I will no longer sit in silence.  I will speak up, because I am tired of feeling trapped within the confines of my own mind. I am tired of putting on this happy face, and pretending like I am okay.  


But you know what?

It is in those moments where you make me feel helpless that I will continue to push forward and fight, because no matter how tight your grasp, how loud your screams, or how hard your scratches may be, I know that I am growing.  Just like the flowers die in Winter and learn to bloom again with Spring, my soul is learning how to rejuvenate amidst this storm.

It is in those moments when I begin to retreat back into the darkness of isolation, where despite my cries for help, I find familiarity in pushing away those around me -that I will write and I will create. I will expose your haunting thoughts, and the debilitating lies that you feed me because contrary to how you make me feel, I am NOT alone in this.

It is in those moments when I start to feel myself slipping into your fatal complacency, when I feel suffocated by the inner workings of my own brain that I will CHOOSE to be joyful. I will CHOOSE to be inspired rather than to be defeated.  I will CHOOSE to be kind to myself. I will CHOOSE to love on those around me, and I will CHOOSE to put my hope and my identity in my God.  

I know that it won’t be easy, and I know that some days will be harder than others, but it is in this simple declaration where a new page will be turned. This is me reclaiming my body, my mind, and my spirit.  This is me CHOOSING to no longer be a prisoner to you.  This is me beginning to set myself free.

Get yourself a chronic illness.
You will get frustrated with the pain,
And you will start to be aggressive towards the people you most love.
They don't understand & that's okay, because you don't wish this on nobody.
But you hope that they will understand you.
You fight with them until the picture of them fades in the distance.

Then you are alone on the journey fighting your own body . . .