You recline on the sofa every day like a lump, doing nothing
You bump into furniture as you wobble around the apartment
Your symptoms get triggered by anything fun and anything stressful
Your constant fatigue denies traveling, dancing, working, living

You make your husband miss work to take you to never-ending medical tests
You burden your friends with sob stories and requests for help
You smell like too much dry shampoo and deodorant because you can rarely shower
Your right eyelid droops, ruining your womanly responsibility for symmetrical beauty

But you don’t give up; somehow you keep going
You have lived through pain, dizziness, gaslighting, loneliness, fear, dread
You have made it through weeks trapped in your apartment by exhaustion
You have survived on cereal snack packs kept near the sofa when the kitchen was too far

You dredge up hope when going to specialist after specialist
You try out new doctors’ recommendations, although there is no cure
You swallow pill after pill every day, longing for relief and symptom management
You continue to put your legs in machines for movement to prevent blood clots and stroke
You are trying despite it all, despite society’s disdain for the weak

Your disabilities are not your fault; you deserve respect and care
You are more than your growing collection of discolored bruises from blood draws
You are more than your crumb-covered feet from the floor you can’t vacuum

You are the body that played with your nieces on weekend visits
You are the arms that bear-hugged friends who needed it
You are the voice that sang “Annie’s Song” at your brother’s wedding
You are the mind that supported people in achieving their dreams
You believe that everyone is worthy of love, that everyone needs kindness

I often hate you for everything you’ve cost me and the years of betrayals of my goals

But I have to love you. You are worthy of my love; you deserve my kindness.
You are my only body; you are my only home.

M. S. Marquart (she/her) is a disabled, mixed-race Asian American poet. Her writing explores the impacts of chronic illness and seeks to shed light on the hidden daily lives of people living with Long COVID and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS). Her work has been published or is forthcoming in a zine by the Thunder & Lighting Poetry Collective, a group of disabled BIPOC and queer poets, titled Interdependence: Integral to Disability Justice, Kaleidoscope: Exploring the Experience of Disability Through Literature and the Fine Arts, Lombardi Voices, miniMAG, Micromance Magazine, and Pillow Writers Anthology 2, which is a publication by the #MEAction online writers group for writers with Long Covid and/or ME/CFS.  

Website: https://msmarquart.com 

 Instagram: @m_s_marquart