About the author:
Nancy Scott has over 990 bylines in magazines, literary journals, anthologies, newspapers, and audio commentaries. She won First Prize in the 2009 International Onkyo Braille Essay Contest. Her work appears in *82 Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Braille Forum, Chrysanthemum, Kaleidoscope, One Sentence Poems, Persimmon Tree, Pulse Voices, Shark Reef, Wordgathering, and Yahoo News.

I’m too young
that’s what I always thought
what I was taught
you don’t get sick when you’re young
 
It struck me like lightning
sparking through my body
leaving burns only I could see
 
Illness doesn’t discriminate
you can be given a life sentence
without committing a crime
 
chronic illness never saw
that I was barely an adult
that my life had just begun,
it charged in and took control
I didn’t stand a chance
 
“I’m too young for this” 
an almost convincing line
like a broken record ingrained into my brain
telling me I should be okay
 
'you can’t get sick when you’re young'
 
Yet you can never be ‘too young’,
age isn’t part of the equation
pain doesn’t ask for ID
and sickness doesn’t check your year of birth
a diagnosis doesn’t care
that your life has just begun
 
So I stand here now,
without a choice
learning to live with the life I was handed,
pulling strength from setbacks
and courage from downfalls
claiming a life that is still mine
unlearning the myths that society teaches

Each good day feels like a ticking time bomb,
waiting for the inevitable to explode.
They say lightning never strikes twice,
but maybe three, four, five times --
each hospital visit, another diagnosis,
each bolt leaving burns I never asked for.
 
The doctors call it chance.
I call it a pattern etched in static,
my body — a map marked with burns.
I used to think lightning was rare,
just a freak of nature.
Now I know it waits in silence,
and when it strikes,
it doesn’t ask if I’m ready.
 
They admire my strength,
but they don’t see my fear.
I’m more than the list they use to define me.
I’m a daughter, a sister, a friend --
I’ve got ambitions,
dreams that stretch beyond this storm.
 
When will it end?
I whisper to the thunder rumbling beneath my skin,
but even as I crumble,
I stand --
courageous, unbroken, and unashamed,
a fierce light with the strength to carry on.

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.