Today, the pain wears pearls,
sits politely between my ribs.
I dress her in cardigans
and loose language:
"I'm just a little tired."
No one asks tired how it learned to limp.
 
At the pharmacy,
I forget
my own name
but remember
every pill by shape,
not color—color lies.
 
The woman at checkout
tells me
I don’t look sick.
As if illness should dress in spectacle,
as if my body forgot to audition
for their idea of broken.
 
Some nights,
my limbs forget they belong to me.
Memory peels away like wallpaper
in a flooded house--
who was I before the diagnoses piled up
like eviction notices from my own skin?
 People offer cures
wrapped in politeness,
like scripture:
drink more water,
think happier thoughts,
be grateful it’s not worse.
Sometimes I nod.
Sometimes I swallow
 their kindness
like a shard of mirror,
because even pity
can feel like attention.
 
I am the archive
of every
"you're exaggerating,"
every "have you tried yoga?"
every "maybe it’s in your head."
Yes, it is.
It lives there.
It eats there.
It sleeps curled beside my dreams,
drooling its fog into the marrow
of what I once called normal.
I carry absence in my spine.
It pulses when I smile too long.
I’ve buried friends
beneath my silence,
lovers in the shape of questions
they were too afraid to ask.
 
No one sees the room
beneath my skin--
where the lights
flicker                  
and all the windows are locked
from the inside.
I have written letters
to the version of me
they would believe.
She walks without flinching,
remembers birthdays,
laughs without consequence.
But she does not exist.
And I am still here.
Unable
to find parking
in the complicated structure
that is my life.

Every witch has a magical familiar,
but outsiders cannot understand them.
They are a witch’s poison and puppet.
 
My mistress loved to bake. “To lure
the dear children in,” she’d say.
Their bones littered her garden.
 
Two brave ones tiptoed inside once,
without her knowledge,
without my usual warning.
I wanted to see how far they’d go.
 
The boy was on a mission,
his sweet tooth crying out
for the gingerbread men,
who waved, sneering and daring
the boy to munch on their bodies.
 
The girl was more cautious,
hesitating at the open spread feast
my mistress had spellbound eternal.
No one is able to resist, not even the girl,
and one bite can corrode control.
 
Like flies to honey,
the pair fluttered to the food,
and I sighed in disappointment,
aware that my mistress was hurrying,
salivating from my call.
 
Mistress trapped them in the kitchen
and prepared the oven, but
the fire refused to grow hotter.
The girl volunteered, claiming
she knew a trick with extra firewood.
 
She knew a trick indeed.
I watched helpless, as she pushed
my mistress into the oven
and sealed her inside.
 
My mistress burned.
Her screams polluted the air,
her fingernails marked the oven door,
as her flesh blackened to ashes.
 
I never saw the boy and girl again,
and though it pained me
to lose my mistress, my host,
I can’t say things will change much.
 
Mistress called me Sugar,
invisible, chronic, unknown,
whispering children inside
my gingerbread walls
like a sickness.

I wasn’t a teenager
The optician said it wasn’t grease either 
Within months I heard voices that sounded similar 
Each day they got friendlier
I felt humiliated I couldn’t see their faces 
They looked like ghosts and light was scattered through my utah 
I felt saddened that in the night the stars were not clear and appeared to be more far 
My mum held me tight and told me I was her strong 25 year old 
Drs said it was the rarest eye disease they ever saw and my story was just about to unfold 
I began to go from poised to quite the clutz 
At least the elderly had jokes about the reflux 
Or pretty much my bad dancing on broadway street 
The sun was once my best friend but there was a time I dreaded the heat 
My eyes watered and the light scattered more into I threw myself into oblivion 
Then I met a brave Palestinian 
He told me not to give up that the eye disease I had was keratoconus and my cornea was wearing thin 
I cried as I once again stumbled and hit my shin
The Palestinian urged me to get a life changing surgery called collagen cross linking 
I heard crickets as I stared at his ghostly figures thinking I saw a short beard through my excessive blinking
My right eye was too far gone and  I was laughed at as I developed astigmatism and everyone laughed at me 
None the less I was numb for hours and then  screaming baby 
Mum took care of me 
Assuring I got salty drops into my eyes 4x a day 
I couldn’t see with my right eye so I kind of felt helpless at this point in my life and I just listened to soothing audio and lay and lay
My eye healed and she asked if I could still see ghosts or scattering
To my surprise the ghosts were gone and I saw the scattering was less on the lights so we got back to knattering
We had great conversations and eventually I took care of mum through her sickness until she passed away and finally met a great surgeon 
She was Indian 
She moved the entire muscle in my eye the scattered lights is still there and ghosts but not the astigmatism unfortunately nothing could relieve the scar 
There are things I want to do like drive, but I might not be able to because contacts feel like you’re wearing foreign objects and getting infections 
I wish your sight could be restored with injections 
Like they do flu jabs and other such nonsense 
None the less it’s a horrific disease but it never stopped me smiling but why be miserable I have my other eye it makes sense 

I speak to you now, soft twin of silence and song--
not in dread,
but in dialogue.
Let this be a reckoning, not a reckoning by force--
but one by tenderness.
 
You have been
the site of wonder,
the seat of shame.
 
When I was young, I covered you,
wishing invisibility.
I mistook self-consciousness for humility--
before I understood vulnerability
as the birthplace of worth.
 
You emerged slowly, like truth,
late-blooming.
And when you came into your own--
not grandly, but fully--
I stood taller beside you.
 
You were never loud,
but you were mine.
And later, loved.
Held in warm hands.
Praised in the hush of midnight.
My fleeting confidence rose with you,
and even in its impermanence,
there was joy.
 
You fed life once.
You poured out milk
like a quiet miracle.
You were more than symbol.
You were service,
love in biology.
 
Now, they scan you.
They mark you with numbers and doubt.
A possible betrayal--
but even in decay, you do not lose dignity.
 
If there is disease,
it is not who you are.
You are a vessel, not a verdict.
 
Society still names you
fetish, scandal, battlefront.
But I call you connection--
to my child, to my lovers, to myself.
To the years I wore you with hesitation,
and the ones I wore you with pride.
 
Sometimes I rest my broken glasses on you--
a moment of absurd tenderness--
and I wonder:
do you still want to speak?
 
If so, speak now:
Tell me how you feel
about being feared,
about being watched,
about carrying a lifetime of meaning
without ever being asked how you feel.
 
Tell me if grief lives there.
Tell me if courage does too.
 
Tell me if, like me,
you have been waiting
not just to be examined--
but understood.
 
My breast,
if you must be taken,
let it be with ceremony.
If you must be saved,
let it be with reverence.
 
And if you are fading,
let it be as moonlight fades--
with quiet beauty,
with memory intact.
 
Because you were never just flesh.
You were always a feeling.

About the author:
Meg is an Australian self-published new Author who has one book *Story: Reflective Poetry* (2017), and a number of poems published to journals, in which some include: *Tipton Poetry Journal* (IN); *The Sunflower Collective* (LA); *SKYLIGHT 47* (UK); *Lifelines at Dartmouth* (MA); *Nature Writing* (UK); *Eureka* (Australia); *ditch* (Canada), and others.

Meg was lucky to have positive press coverage in newspapers across the state of Queensland, and a positive written review by The Red Room Company (Australia) regarding this book which shows a reflective style of writing. Meg’s writing demonstrates elements of whimsy, transparency of feelings, abstractions, and may present as illustrative through her use of sensory and colourful words and imagery.

Meg is self-taught and formerly worked in mental health as a therapist and support person. Meg’s education and qualifications are in Counselling. Meg is now retired due to an illness and has taken to writing as an outlet.

Meg really admires and feels inspired by renowned poets local and international, such as Sam Wagan Watson, Dylan Thomas, Lord Byron, Les Murray, Clive James, Judith Wright, Dorothea Mackellar, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Yeats, Ocean Vuong, Kevin Young, Sharon Olds, Henri Cole, T.S. Eliot, Mary Oliver, Wordsworth, Jacob Polley — and many of the Bloodaxe Book poets.

Again She defeated me in the battle 
and as usual I came back as winner 
with a broken heart full of petals given by 
the golden moonlit night for whom I always kept 
a thorny conversation for her and she always 
smiled to remove the pride of sultry days 
and she does always.... 
and I always do the same and get defeated... 
 
And it is still night in a silent tent 
and I have to bow down to kiss the feet of the nectar 
 
I have to be alive to be winner 
after being defeated and defeated and defeated .   

​About the author:
Partha Sarkar, a resident of Ichapur, a small town of a province West Bengal Of India, is a graduate who writes poems inspired by the late Sankar Sarkar and his friends (especially Deb kumar Khan) to protest against the social injustice and crimes against nature. His poems have been in different magazines both in Bangla and in English. Once, he would believe in revolution but now he is confused because of the obscurity of human beings, though he keeps fire in soul despite.

How cathartic, this roving mind,
This absent functionality!
All schedules and packed deadlines
Cast off, adrift in sunbeams.
Oh—that indigestion, tender head,
The aching in my wrist?
Whisked away by Vagrant’s touch,
Cured by idleness.
I dérive, as the French might say,
And take the landscape’s hand,
It leads me in a quick foxtrot,
Laughing with the band,
With the blue jays’ bouncing tune--
This lack of destination
Is my destination,
This drifting out of gloom.
And when I perch back on my chair,
And set my hands to strive,
I find the Vagrant’s straying
Has re-aligned my mind.

Inside the dead of winter
Curls a fiery soul
A little bear that sleeps defiant
Waiting out the cold.
 
She does not let it press her
Or file down her teeth,
The wind of sorrow whipping ‘round
Is flummoxed by the beat
The steady, measured beat
Of a soul crouched for the thaw -
A soul with wherewithal.
 
The snow intones a chant, a curse
And drifts down in layers deep,
It wants to choke
It wants to damn
The soul to darkened sleep.
 
It comprehends too late,
As it trusts grief’s gravity,
That the little bear has prepared
For this very thing.
 
She’d swallowed embers in the summer,
And fireflies in fall,
To keep her soul e’er burning
Inside Depression's squall.
 
And when springtime rears its roses,
And the wind softens for the bees,
The soul, she wakes her willpow’r,
And rises with the green.

Perhaps an existential crisis
Shook the universe’s mind,
And sent out blasted aftershocks
To certain human vines--
Those coupled with the cosmic
Tropic, all matted
In the dense, humid questions
We utter in the quiet.
The eerie sun rolls out re-runs
And charges the same fee.
A seventh grader gets a 116
Percent on her paper, and cries
In the closet because
That’s what she wanted, and now
What?
It can be triggered by nothing,
A button tearing off a coat,
And pop! Freedom! Wandering,
Wondering. Where’s everyone going?
A planet-sized pied piper plays
But the song stops in my ear,
I pull out a hearing aid,
And forget what
The point is.
And it’s hard to force it back in,
It’s hard to settle the brain back in,
When I’ve heard the booming silence
Of the cloudless sky,
And asked what’s the meaning of walking,
Of pushing the muscles upwards
When every movement seems inane,
Insane, incredulous,
Laughable and ridiculous,
No—even laughing seems meaningless—!
For what are jokes, but pointing at mirrors?
But I digress.
Does this confession
Rattle anyone? Tear a button off a coat? 
Don’t leave me out in the eerie sun
I can’t be the only one
Drifting all afloat.

About the author:
Emmie Christie’s work includes practical subjects, like feminism and mental health, and speculative subjects, like unicorns and affordable healthcare. She has been published in various short story markets including Ghost Orchid Press, Infinite Worlds Magazine, and Flash Fiction Online. She graduated from the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2013. You can find her at www.emmiechristie.com.

You are familiar with the tale.
A mermaid, sang with the most beautiful angelic sound.
Had to surrender voice to be human
and marry the prince.  He wanted another
princess, and poor mermaid dissolved
in the ocean.
 
Aphasia is:
A snake that coils and hisses.
Diabolical Ursula schemes to rule the ocean world.
An evil witch who casts a spell over speech.
A toothy fox ready to bite your head off.
A sudden end to your dreams,
only able to see a dark tunnel, the sun blocked.
 
Disney gave the story a happy ending, so Ariel
married the prince.   With courage and strength,
you overcome disability and are much better. 
You have learned much and are still alive.
A fairytale ending to a scary fable.

Forest shadows hide impairment.
Owls hoot, concealed in the dense canopy.
Tall, leafy trees flank the faint path.
Difficult to follow, wander aimlessly.
Lost, and the orange sun dips down;
walk in an endless maze.   
Leg weak, worry about falling. 
Disability is a war with no battles.
 
In a clearing, giant raccoons
with bushy whiskers, striped fur,
and ringed tails encircle us and watch
with reflective beady eyes.
Leader wears mask, makes handicap
fall behind, cannot run.  How to escape?
Will the fairy godmother help
or will the evil witch devour us?
 
Hear a car with music blaring
from the speakers.  Look towards
the sound and see a road. 
Hiking poles to get over the rocky trail,
right half of body weak.
Now, see the way to overcome
yet another challenge.