I wake each morning already late to my own body,

already negotiating with pain like it’s a landlord

who knows I have nowhere else to go.

This flesh is loud.

It creaks, it burns, it rebels in languages

I’ve been forced to become fluent in.

Chronic illness does not arrive with drama—

it settles in.

It moves the furniture.

It eats my plans straight out of the fridge

and leaves nothing but fatigue and guilt behind.

It teaches me the geography of my limits

by walking me into them, over and over.

There is grief here.

Quiet grief, unphotogenic grief—

for the body I imagined,

for the ease everyone else seems to borrow without asking.

I mourn in increments: canceled mornings, shortened futures,

dreams resized to fit the energy I have left.

Pain is not poetic while you’re inside it.

It’s repetitive.

It’s boring.

It’s humiliating.

It asks me to be brave when I would rather be ordinary.

It asks me to rest in a world that rewards endurance

and punishes slowness.

So I become feral by necessity.

I sharpen humor into armor.

I make softness a rebellion.

I decorate this aching body and dare it to be seen—

medicated, exhausted, still breathing, still here.

My illnesses are loud.

They narrate my days without permission.

But I answer louder—

with honesty, with rage when needed,

with tenderness when I can afford it.

I am not inspirational.

I am persistent.

I am learning how to live inside limitation

without disappearing into it.

Still diagnosed.

Still exhausted.

Still feral.

Still becoming. 🥂💊