Chronically Poetic

There are no some days here.

This is every day.

Pain is not an event—

it is the floor beneath my feet,

the air I move through,

the quiet agreement my body makes

before I even open my eyes.

Even the good days ache.

They just ache politely.

They smile while they do it,

foreshadowing what they will collect from me later—

interest paid in joints,

in ligaments stretched past memory,

in a body that always keeps the receipt.

I wake tired.

Not sleepy.

Not groggy.

Tired like something essential

never came back after childhood.

Tired like my soul is hauling weight

my muscles were never designed to carry.

Caffeine is a joke we tell ourselves.

Coffee warms my hands

but my pulse does not care.

Energy does not arrive.

My heart barely looks up.

This exhaustion lives deeper than chemistry—

it is stitched into the blueprint.

I ration movement

the same as rationed money.

I calculate stairs,

chairs,

distance,

recovery.

I know exactly how much of myself

I can afford to spend

before the debt comes due.

My joints slide where they should anchor.

My body forgets its own boundaries.

Pain blooms without permission—

sharp, dull, electric, heavy—

never asking which kind I have space for today.

People call it manageable.

As if endurance were a treatment.

As if surviving every day

were not already a full-time job.

There is no reset.

No morning where I start at zero.

Every day begins mid-sentence,

already aching,

already tired,

already behind.

And still—

I live here.

Inside a body that refuses rest

and demands persistence.

Inside a fatigue so old

it feels ancestral.

This is not bravery.

This is not inspiration.

This is reality:

waking up exhausted,

moving through pain,

and doing it again tomorrow

because there is no other option.