Pain Stings

The pain of not knowing fills my body like a breaking air conditioner.

It tries to cool you down but really just shakes and leaks and keeps you lukewarm.

Putting out little fires everywhere on your couches’ recliner with a warm comfy blanket and snuggling down with your two big dogs on you, trusting you, relying on you, and having to continually get up because someone texts and needs this or you forgot that. Soon, the sweet canines get up with lazy, confused faces and find a safer place to take their nap.

Betrayal is like when your best friend knows something that you think is seriously wrong with your health and when you are sitting there with your hair fuzzy and wet with tears, your long sleeve shirt she gave you in the summer is stained with tea because you have a partial bottom lip and can’t drink like a normal human and the capris she gave you are wide open for the world to see because the zipper broke the first time you wore them. But beggars can’t be choosers.

To me, pain is not 37 shots into your spine twice a week so that you can walk again or your father raping you when you are five or even your beating your head against the fridge because of writer’s block. Pain is your best friend trying to gain legal guardianship of you when you are a 49 year old woman with an IQ of 184 who just wrote a book.

Pain is an author trying to open her heart and no one quite gets it, because, then, you are alone.