Body

My body
has always been this cold thing
my mother
always tells me
it’s a bad thing
I’ve learned to tell myself the same
but don’t see a thing in the world I could change.
Maybe my body
remains so cold because all of the heat has gone to its joints
maybe my body
has become so brittle because it cannot bear anymore weight.

My therapist
suggests referring me elsewhere
doesn’t know how to talk about my pain
has no idea what it feels like
I can’t remember a day in the last ten years
where I had no idea what if feels like
where pain wasn’t baseline
where a day off wasn’t a miraculous exception.

I don’t remember the last miraculous exception.

Don’t remember not feeling like the sick friend
“No,”
has begun to slip from my tongue
before they even ask
my body
a constant rejection
the invites
have stopped arriving at its door.

But they are all still so full of compliments,
“look, how small and thin,”
how they wish
appetite was their problem
and that’s the problem
when sick
hides itself deep in my bones
buries itself in my vascular system
has yet to be diagnosed a name
other than inflamed
other than my body
is my body’s worst enemy.

I wish so desperately
to call it anything but mystery
to be complimented on anything
other than the feeble thing I have become

to stop hearing “psychosomatic,”
like I haven’t had enough panic attacks
to distinguish
fake heart attack
from this body’s real battleground.

This battleground
wants to give war an expiration date
has begun to beg for death sentence
but fears it just the same
when the enemy
is the walls my house is built of
it is both shelter
and the reason it’s crumbling down
the bombs
are being dropped up
from the ground

and maybe if it were holy
maybe if there was guiding light
and god
maybe if I believed prayer
to be anything other than excuse

but most times
I think we are just dealt this
and there’s no one to return the deck to
there is only our ability to manage the day’s hand

like drink enough water
eat every meal offered by a friend
explain, that when they ask what you’re hungry for
and you say, “nothing,”
you mean
please tell me to eat anything
and actually do that
eat anything like every bite is a step closer to hope

Because sometimes hope
is the closest you’ll ever get to healing
and the furthest
you’ll ever be
from giving up.