please open the jar
don’t sit down yet
just don’t call off again this week
I am thirty-four and I have the hand strength of a fifty-three year old.
I am thirty-four and age means nothing in the face of chronic illnesses.
When my DNA was coded, my connective tissue was made too loose.
Now my muscles do the work of keeping me together
So when I’m asked, “aren’t you too young to be in so much pain?”
I don’t always have energy to answer
you who can’t handle a paper cut but expect me to live comfortably with no complaints at a continuous 7.5 on the pain scale
you who asks, ‘how bad could it hurt, really?’
as if I don’t have connective tissue everywhere
as if it doesn’t hurt in every language, everywhere
you who thinks, maybe, just maybe I am faking it
stretching the truth like my collagen
I mean how can I have something you’ve never heard of?
Why do we think people fake things we can’t see?
I can’t raise my arm today and no one is here to see
this sort of lost argument
not here to watch my pain holding hands with my anxiety
while I wish mine was being held
by someone
who never undermines my experience as invisibly ill.
who tries to see what can’t be seen but never tries to make it elegant.
Growing up, my father always wore a shirt that said,
“pain is weakness leaving the body”
is it weakness leaving? Are you sure?
Still, dad? I know I’m strong but must pain sculpt my strength?
Must we always name pain beautiful, useful?
Sometimes it isn’t, no?
Sometimes it is invisible and still somehow ugly, like a haunting.
My dad is
is hundreds of miles away from me and my body
and his body is sometimes puking from the cancer drugs
which is its’ own kind of argument and
I am hundreds of miles of right here in this body unfortunately but fortunately
same blood, different pain.
Is it weakness leaving? Are you sure?
Still, dad?
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