The Muddled Thoughts of the Chronically Ill

Lifeless

She bore the weight
of a struggle she would never wish on her enemies,
a pain
that seeped through every part of her body
and inhabited her in a way
that left her gasping for anything else,
a silent stalker
no one would ever believed existed.

She counted her days in pills,
one to just make it all go away
and another to keep it away.
but they only held it at bay for so long
before it flared back up,
a slithering monster
begging her for more blood
squeezing it out of her veins
with talons laced in medical gloves
and whispers of many more bad things to come.

She held herself as a warrior
that only she could see.
While others saw her as a coward
losing to a name that didn't exist
with pills that killed her brain.

She held onto all the consequences that would come,
a future riddled with more problems
she was at the only root of,
with a liver and kidney beyond destroyed,
and a soul worn to pieces,
but what they can't understand
is that she can't see a future at all.

She held the label drug addict.
Even when she wasn't the one who put it there,
She wanted to be a patient
someone left with a chance to fight.
instead she was strapped into the dress
with needles plunging deep into her soul
and disappointed faces shaking past her.

She wanted a fighting chance
at a future she spent all those hours praying for,
instead she had a system turn its back on her,
claiming there was nothing more,
left for her in this life.