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.

In another life,
I’d be the one the other side of the curtain.
Blue scrubs, badge clipped on,
Strong enough to lift someone out of pain,
Instead of drowning in it myself.
 
Maybe id be a nurse. Or a paramedic
Shouting over sirens with adrenaline in my chest
Or a doctor, calm and clever,
The kind that makes people feel safe,
The one that makes a difference
 
Not this.
Not 24 and shattered,
Living like I’m 84,
Every joint and nerve staging a protest i never signed up for
 
I’d be working shifts, not managing symptoms
Filling out charts, not pip forms,
I’d be saving lives, not just trying to keep mine bearable.
 
And maybe, just maybe
I’d make my parents proud in the way i always imagined,
Not for being strong though the pain,
But for becoming someone that i always dreamed of being,
For being something that mattered,
Not just surviving something i never asked for.
 
And id be proud too,
Not just for coping,
Not for just getting through the day,
But for being someone,
Doing something,
making a real difference
 
In that life id have a purpose,
Not just prescriptions,
And a body that carries me,
Instead of one i have to carry,
 
In another life…
I would have made an amazing nurse,
I would’ve changed lives,
I would’ve made the difference in the world I always wanted to
 
In another life…
I would be really living, not just surviving each day.

I was always the broken one,
a jagged shard of mirrored light.
The fairest of them all--
but they never told me
fairness was a curse.
When they laid me in the glass coffin,
the dwarves wept salt that carved
rivers in their faces.
They did not know
the coffin was not a tomb
but a lens.
Through it, I saw the prince’s approach,
his perfect features fractured
by the warped glass.
I saw the cracks in his smile,
the pity behind his eyes.
I saw myself as they saw me:
a body polished and preserved,
an object too fragile to touch
but too pretty to let go.
So I shattered the glass
with my unkissed lips,
cut my way out of their story,
and left the prince bleeding on the forest floor.
He called me wicked,
but wicked is just what they name us
when we break the molds
they cast us in.
I wandered until I found a mirror
that didn’t lie.
And in its broken face,
I saw my own reflection--
whole at last.

Ella Enchanted couldn't get the Glass Slipper on,
let alone imagine dancing the night away until midnight;
swollen feet and broken dreams, she stayed indoors and slept
her life away. Her Fairy Godmother gave her beautiful dreams,
of coaches made of pumpkins, horses that once were mice,
footmen who were all lizards and a coachman who remains a rat.
Her dirty rags transformed magically into a beautiful dress,
an amazing hallucination dream, where everything is possible.
Night terrors they call it, night sweats, another symptom in a land
where illness is queen, but what of her handsome king, waiting?
Another day another symptom, spinning webs of falling dreams
from worn down spindles, so much pain to be a sleeping beauty,
horrible power of invisible diseases, creeping, crawling, crying,
wishing on a purple star, one day she’ll find her happily ever now.

About the author:
Peter Devonald is a UK based poet/screenwriter who has lived with disability most of his life. He is winner Waltham Forest Poetry 2022, Heart Of Heatons Poetry Awards 2023 & 2021, joint winner FofHCS 2023 and second in Shelley Memorial Poetry 2024. Finalist in Tickled Pink ekphrastic contest 2024, highly commended Hippocrates Prize and Passionfruit Review 2024, shortlisted for OxCanalFest Poetry 2024, Saveas & Allingham 2023. Poet in residence Haus-a-rest, Forward Prize nominated, two Best Of The Net nominations and widely published including Broken Spine Anthology, London Grip, Door Is A Jar, Bluebird Word, Vipers Tongue, Voidspace and Loft Books. 50+ film awards, former senior judge/ mentor Peter Ustinov Awards (iemmys) and Children’s Bafta nominated.

www.scriptfirst.com
Instagram: @peterdevonald
Facebook: @pdevonald
Twitter/X: petedevonald

​I’m tired of all the prayers and the apologies
People who care tell me I need to stop
apologizing, but for once—-I am Not The One
Apologizing. Not apologizing for my existence, as
one of my close friends always tells me.
Stop apologizing for existing. But, how can I stop
when everyone seems to want to tell me that they are sorry for me?
I don’t want your prayers or your ‘fake apologies’, because
“the world doesn’t end, it just feels like it does.”
I don’t know who I’m supposed to be when everyone
keeps using their teacher pointer-finger to tell me that
something is wrong with my body.
My entire life, my own father asked me what was wrong with me,
but not because he cared. I stopped having an answer to give people
whenever they asked me this. When will people stop pointing their finger
At Me? I’m not a circus attraction, I’m a human being.
You’re sorry that this ‘happened’ to me? If someone else tells me this,
I will fucking flee! I’m tired of the fake sympathy and the fake apologies.
I’m tired of the unrealistic optimism—the unrealistic words that “maybe you will outgrow it.
Sometimes if you are diagnosed when you are younger,
you will outgrow it by the time you are old.” Just stop.
Just fucking stop. Just stop with the stares, the prayers, and the apologies.
I’ve expected the mourning of my own body, so why can’t you?
Why do you feel the need to heal me? I don’t want to be healed
and I didn’t ask for it. "But, does the world really end?
They say it just feels like it does. But, would I actually rather be me?"
Who is this version of me that everyone else sees? Who is she?

Quotations in italics taken from the song, ​"I'd Rather Be Me', from the Mean Girls Musical.

Forest, dark and scary.   Will I lose the
magic beans?   Animals speak,
ogres growl, and wolves disguised.
Fairy tales read to me as a child,
are remembered as an adult. 
 
My story begins with a black, pointed hat
and scraggly broom.  A witch suddenly
appears, casts a spell, and causes a stroke
that almost kills me.   Grey matter twisted,
and the enchantress short circuits my brain.
 
Aphasia is a serpent that stings,
an ordeal of shadows and contrasts.
My mind is filled with jumbled shapes,
nonsense words, and mixed-up colors.
Demons shout sinister curses.  Still cloudy,
but I see the sun start to peek through.

It started with pain between
the shoulder blades, like Nyx
had placed the eclipsed moon
inside, forever hidden.
 
A calcified cave – a coiled cloak
of darkness enfolded the softness
that remained of that body. I wore
it well, this forever home.
 
The pain dissolved into rain as the
storm coaxed clouds to empty.
I felt better then, filled with water,
forever heavy.
 
A delicious soft foot, I learned
to contract like lightning bolts,
relax like mulch. And moved faster
than I had forever.
 
My power oozed from my mouth,
sleek slimy stringy mucus, no
longer a cough burden. Fast comet
tail highways forever.
 
My shell expanded with calcified
excitement, the night and I foolish
friends, free in this shadow air,
forever healthy.

​Once,   in   a   moonlit   forest,   a   female  felt  a
foreboding  fog  of her future and rested her head
against   a   felled   oak   tree.  The  lobed  leaves
caressed  her  brow, creating  a  crown of weaved
green. As she slept, her delicate  cheek absorbed
the wheels of time – the  wide  of  the  good years
and the narrow of the dry barren.   And acorns fell
one  at  a  time through the quiet air, landing in the
soft  soil  with  expectation. When  she  woke,  her
arms caught in branches and her hair was a hat of
luscious  leaves.  She  tried  to  pull  herself  away,
but   the  acorns  edged  ever  closer – their  shiny
heads  like accusatory fingers. Go, she whispered,
I  cannot  take  care  of  you. But the acorns didn’t
answer,  just waited patiently for her roots to grow.