Inventory for the days I am told I look fine by Gloria Ogo

A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: Inventory for the days I am told I look fine. Smaller text reads: Discussing disability in fairy tales and folklore.

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.

---

About the author: 
Gloria Ogo is an American-based Nigerian writer with over seven published novels and poetry collections. Her work has appeared in Eye to the Telescope, Brittle Paper, Spillwords Press, Metastellar, CON-SCIO Magazine, Kaleidoscope, The Easterner, Daily Trust, and more. With an MFA in Creative Writing, Gloria was a reader for Barely South Review. She is the winner of the Brigitte Poirson 2024 Literature Prize, the finalist for the Jerri Dickseski Fiction Prize 2024 and ODU 2025 College Poetry Prize both with honorable mentions. Her work was also longlisted for the 2025 American Short(er) Fiction Prize. https://glriaogo.wixsite.com/gloria-ogo.