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.

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.

When first we open our eyes to the world,
tiny fists clutching the boundless,
we are cradled as enough--
fragile, infinite, perfect in the gaze of love.
No questions asked, no measure weighed;
we are simply here, and that is all.
 
But the world, sharp-edged and brimming with voices,
sees not the light we carry.
It begins its chiseling,
its carving of worth from the outside in.
“You are too dark,” it says,
“too pale, too slow, too loud.”
“You love the wrong way.”
“You dream too big.”
“You belong elsewhere, but not here.”
 
With every glance, every word unspoken,
the mirrors around us shatter.
Each shard reflects another flaw
we didn’t know we had.
What once felt infinite
now seems confined to the lines
others draw around us.
We shrink to fit their frames,
contorting ourselves to be seen
as something—anything—close to enough.
 
And when we cannot shrink further,
we fall.
Fall into the silences of our own making,
lost in the echoes of “not enough.”
We let the weight of their judgments
shape the way we see ourselves:
broken, unworthy, incomplete.
The soft hum of self-belief quiets
beneath the roar of the world.
 
Enough becomes a weapon.
It shifts and twists in the hands of others--
“You are good enough for now,”
they say, with kindness that stings.
“Is this all you’ve got? Surely it’s not enough.”
“You’ll never be enough.”
The word folds in on itself,
its edges cutting deep,
turning possibility into limitation,
turning wholeness into doubt.
 
But enough is not static.
It moves, it grows.
It becomes a breaking point:
“I have had enough!”
Enough of their rules,
their assumptions,
their smallness that demands
we make ourselves smaller.
 
It becomes a reckoning:
“I am enough for myself.”
It becomes a declaration:
“I have more than enough to give.”
 
Rebuilding begins slowly,
tentative as a newborn’s first breath.
Piece by piece,
we reclaim the shards others discarded.
We stitch together the moments we thought
were too small to matter--
the resilience in our tears,
the kindness in our failures,
the courage it takes to try again.
 
And yet, rebuilding is not a single act.
It is the slow, deliberate sifting of noise.
The voices that once roared “not enough”
still linger, insistent and unyielding.
Their echoes creep in during quiet moments,
whispering, testing, taunting.
So we sit with them.
We let the noise speak,
not to believe it,
but to understand where it came from.
In the clutter of doubt, we search--
for the voice beneath the noise,
the one that is our own.
 
This is the hardest work:
to unlearn the lies we were told,
to untangle the barbed wires of judgment,
to separate the truth of who we are
from the weight of who we were told to be.
But in the stillness of reflection,
truth begins to emerge,
a fragile whisper at first:
“I am enough.”
 
With every step forward,
the whisper grows louder,
until it becomes a steady song:
“I am enough.
Not because I am perfect,
but because I am here.”
 
And as this truth takes root,
our gaze turns outward.
We see the brokenness in others,
the weight they carry
of being told they are less.
But we know now--
we know the lie,
the cruel game of measuring worth.
 
Enough is no longer a question,
nor a weapon,
but a promise.
It holds space for our flaws,
our beauty, our growth.
It reminds us that in being ourselves,
we are sufficient.
 
In their eyes, we see the same glimmer,
the same light that no voice can extinguish.
And so we say:
“You are enough, too.”
Not because you’ve proven it,
but because you’ve always been.
 
Let the world try to tear us down.
Let it question, measure, compare.
We will answer with the quiet defiance of knowing:
We are not perfect,
but we are whole.
Not better, not worse--
simply, wholly,
enough.