I am fluent in pain.

Not conversational—

immersed.

It is my first language,

learned before rest,

before trust,

before I knew bodies were supposed to be homes.

Pain conjugates me daily:

past injuries,

present flares,

a future I’m warned not to plan.

I speak it without thinking now—

the way I measure rooms by exits,

the way I translate joy into “temporary,”

the way my breath learns to bargain.

Doctors hear an accent.

Friends hear exaggeration.

Strangers hear silence.

But pain hears me perfectly.

It corrects my posture.

Interrupts my sleep.

Edits my ambitions down to footnotes.

I am fluent in pain

the way a country becomes fluent in war—

not because it wants to be,

but because survival demands clarity.

Still, I am bilingual.

I speak humor in public.

Hope in private.

Defiance when I can afford it.

And some days—quietly, rebelliously—

I practice a language my body doesn’t recognize yet:

rest without guilt,

joy without consequence,

a future not spoken in warning signs.

I am fluent in pain.

But I am not only that.