Submissions by maryjosephs

Sometimes all
the weight of all the world
surrounds me,
sometimes, yes,
even happy thoughts feel bleak.
then the weight
condenses as a cage
and freezes,
and I know I'm truly weak -

weak enough to hold a sickness in my core,
weak enough to let the cancer spread,
weak enough to go past caring any more,
weak enough to feel no dread.

Now it seems
the weight of all the world
is in me,
frozen hard,
covering my fire with ice.
I will try
vomiting it out
completely,
triggered by a...

She pulled away the barcode from her wrist. The plastic bracelet took a while to break.  It had been hours, it had been days in fact since she had last noticed it, but it had been there, witnessing her pains, ever since she'd joined that weary cast of warded patients waiting to be well.

After she'd got home, and turned her key in the door, and seen the usual mess just as she'd left it, and charged her dead phone, and boiled her stale kettle, she'd spent an unmeasuredly peaceful afternoon soaking the hospital away from her skin, from her hair, from her soul.  She had found her bed...