I wake up and the fingers on my right hand are

Numb.

That fuzzy, black and white TV noise feeling

courses through my veins.

Are my nerves dying?

Agonizing mood swings,

wild nausea, the headaches like someone is

playing whack-a-mole in my head,

in my bones, and I was never given the choice

to grab the mallet.

Maybe it’s simply the Universe,

making it even for that time when I was 6 and

hit my little brother for taking some worthless

piece of plastic out of my grubby little hands.

It’s the worst kind of shadow;

of knowing there’s no being saved from this one. 

This writing is about losing your sense of self and bodily autonomy to a chronic, incurable illness.