Status Updates From The Body Alone: A Lyrical A...

“A wound marks the threshold between interior and exterior. I have no such threshold. I hurt the normal…”
“…leaving will not help. There is no threshold; therefore, absence solves nothing. Little of life remains when wellness predicates participation.”

*mic drop*

“When I wake in the morning, I wake in pain. When I sit at my desk, when I drink red wine, when I laugh, when he lifts my shirt over my head and pulls me to bed, all of it filters through pain” (38).

“When the pain began, I was a second-year graduate student studying stories. Theology, specifically. Because we tell ourselves stories in order to live, remember? Because we desperately want it all to mean something, don’t we? […]

“For the briefest of moments, the man in the orange jumpsuit and I share a common vulnerability: our compromised mobility forces us to rely on the knowledge, compassion, and skill of other people. I am at the same time, relieved and ashamed of my relief as his bed is wheeled away. […]

“I should tell you now, this is a story that doesn’t end well” (11).

“Or maybe it’s better to say that this is a story that doesn’t end how you think it will” (12).

“Or maybe I should just tell you it is exactly like this: this is a story that doesn’t end” (13).

“What does dying feel like? Does it feel like being absorbed by your own body?

I sat still, accounting for each breath, insecure yet somehow cognizant that each passing moment was ferrying me away from that elusive physical sensation so often defined by only its absence: normal.

This was no ordinary headache. This is a call demanding response” (9).

so far so beautifully written