Pain is a hungry thing, and it will sing you crazy.
It doesn’t stop for you.
I will break you quickly, then slowly, it says.
It strikes. Then sits back. Your day proceeds.
The next day it greets you with a familiar smile.
Time to begin again.

It doesn’t stop for you.
This is the hardest truth.

You thought you were strong, but soon, nothing matters but escape.
And yet,
Your organs skitter to the rhythm of living they’ve always done
A song so often sung it would take more than tears to break it
More than fears to break it
More than the panic that claws you to pieces to break it.
Even on the worst nights that leave you beating the floor with your knees
They won’t stop for you
Liver, kidneys, lungs and heart
Their music plays loud and it wins even in the losing.

There is work to be done. Water to be boiled. Restless bodies tucked into bed. Lullabies sung through your broken throat and hugs for the baby after a bonk that bring all your insides back inside you. For a second, you are saved. Then, set loose again.

There are strangers to be greeted. Companies to argue with, bosses to please. Bureaucracy that smashes its bat into your skull and must be greased with smiles that kill you.

You go to work. You feed your kids. It’s not enough. You get up again.
You give yourself orders:
Be happy. Stop being crazy! Just stop. Be fine. Pretend to be fine.
You can’t follow any of them.

The pain looks like this: I haven’t worn mascara for a year. I’ve cried so hard my face looks different for a full day after. I’ve left work to scream in my car. I’ve hit myself so hard my head sings all the next day, like a band of crickets in sun-burnt grass.

The pain also looks like this: pills with applesauce morning and night. Dinners vomited into the sink to no fanfare, because that’s just what happens now. Jittering your leg up and down, fast, because you are trapped and when you sit down, your body remembers. Run, it says, but there’s nowhere to run. So you jitter.

The pain has no face you can strike, no body you can fight. It simply comes, and stays. And stays, and smothers, and blinds, and stays.
It stays as others move. It stays as children grow. It stays as jobs are gained and lost, as death is faced and medicine is taken that puffs you up, thins you out, makes you lose hair, grow hair, throw up, pass out.

Pain is a hungry thing, and it will sing you crazy.
It doesn’t stop for you
Scream yourself hoarse
It doesn’t stop for you
Hit and rage and curse and destroy everything you hold dear
It doesn’t stop for you

God knows
And still it repeats
It doesn’t stop for you.