Chronic illness

 In the half-light of the consulting room,

I was renamed—

not Mary, not Jo, not Ella, but Chronic,

a label stamped on my forehead, invisible ink

that everyone seems to see but me.

Chronic – the prefix to my every condition,

a companion more loyal than any dog,

nudging its cold nose into my business,

whispering sweet nothings like forever and never again.

Mornings taste of metal, spoon-fed by routine,

pills rattling in their orange bottles like maracas,

a fiesta I never wished to attend.

Outside, the world spins at the speed of life,

while I am stuck, buffering,

a video paused on the face of someone laughing.

My bed, a life raft in the open sea of my bedroom,

holding me aloft amidst waves of sheets

and the detritus of my own shipwreck—

the books I mean to read, the clothes I swore to wear

on days I'd conquer the world, not the bathroom.

Let's catch up soon, they text, those friends of mine,

not realizing I've been frozen in amber

since the last time they saw me smile,

a photograph capturing the before,

not the endless, sprawling after.

There are good days, moments even, crystallized in amber—

when my body is not a battleground, but a meadow,

blooming with possibilities, a brief forgetting.

Yet the shadow, it waits, patient as only a chronic companion can be,

for the clock to tick, the season to shift,

and for me to remember that this is not a visit,

but a lifelong lease.

The mirror is the cruelest of audiences,

reflecting back a stranger in my skin,

eyes clouded with if onlys and what ifs,

lips tight with unsaid words, unshed tears,

for the person I used to be, for the person I could have become.

Yet within this chronicle of Chronic,

there lies a fierce, untold strength,

the resilience of a weed growing through cracks in the concrete,

persistent, unyielding, striving towards the sun,

whispering to the world—I am here, I am still here,

and this, this is my life, chronic but luminous,

a testament to the stubborn light of survival.

- Aspen Greenwood