If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that…
This Is Invisible Illness
Clumsily slicing away at the chaff
In our desperate desires
To discover what is real and true
Between the facile tasks, that take over an hour
To complete
We compete
With the waking world
Swaddled in their discomfort like the perpetually bereaved,
They tell us
That this is a journey
A chance for growth
But not for them
The memory and mourning,
The confusion
And the disbelief
That these relatively young hands
Could so easily hold
The tremors of the Aged
That rippling water
Passed off
As a wave of anxiety
Amid orders
To ‘take the air’,
And gobble up those vitamins
The ones whose lives
Do not resemble ours
Line up
To inform us of how we should be grateful
For bodies, that cannot discern
Between climbing a mountain
And taking a shower
For muscles and ligaments
That scream and tear
Within a shell that slowly devours itself
We know these carcasses
Better than you,
Medical liar
Constantly shifting
The parameters of normalcy,
Re-writing our conditions with yourself at centre stage
Stating that we caused this,
Chose this,
Birthed this
That we failed the right doctors
But venerated
The wrong Gurus
And simply
Didn’t drink enough
Green tea
Teaching us how to be
The ideal model
Of an invalid
While we bite our tongues,
Swallowing
That bitter blood
Because the anger
Wastes our precious energy –
A gift you don’t deserve
The hideous enforced patience
For those who don’t see us as Patients,
This is Chronic Illness.
Copyright © The Martian Princess Chronicles 2016. All rights reserved.
The Martian Princess Chronicles 