The pharmacy rang
to tell me I was
denied.

Call your doctor, they said.
Call your insurance.
Call your senator.

I call my mother and cry
in frustration
until the phone
begins to spark static
on my cheek.

*

If only I can prove this medicine
that is not healing me,
is helping me enough,
is helping me maintain,
is needed,
is the best I’ve got,
is more than
nothing.

*

The fistula in my belly sucks in, greedily.
Only I can feel it, a hollowness
inside.

*

Close my eyes
when the needle hits,
cry out as it breaks
the skin,
leaves its teardrop on the surface,
a tiny ball of blood.

*

Scar tissue in small nodules,
like marbles underneath
my skin.
I wake in the night
in pain
trying to massage the marbles down,
to break them up,
dissolve their aching bodies back
into my own.

*

No change, I report, when the doctor asks.
No change, when the tests come back.
No change—not as good as better, not as bad
as worse.

Is that not enough?

*

Iron pills, vitamin B, vitamin D,
vitamin xyz,
to strengthen my constitution.
Pop two or three,
it’s all the same to me,
the levels never stick,
and round and round we go.

*

I rage into the telephone.
But there is no one
on the other end.

---

Faune Vita (she/her) is a queer, chronically ill writer and artist from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas whose work explores themes of illness and embodiment. Her writing and artwork have been featured in Mississippi Quarterly, Club Plum, The Shallot Literary Magazine, and more. She currently teaches writing at a small college in Western Massachusetts.