Before I learned to speak, the body already knew
the alphabet of shivers, the grammar of a fever’s climb.
It memorized the long vowels of waiting rooms,
the consonants of needles, sharp and clinical.
While I was learning words like please and why,
it was translating pain into a language only nerves could read.
The body keeps a different kind of diary.
Not in ink, but in the way mornings feel like glass,
the way stairs become mountains,
the way a hand can tremble holding coffee
and still find its way to the mouth.
It writes in the script of fatigue,
in the punctuation of sighs.
I used to think the body was a traitor,
a map that led me everywhere but whole.
I marked it in red: here, the betrayal of the hip;
here, the mutiny of the gut;
here, the place where energy goes to die.
I wanted a new body, a refund, a different draw of cards.
But the body was not betraying me.
It was trying to survive me.
It was building levees against the flood of itself,
learning to reroute rivers, to grow new paths
when the old ones collapsed.
It was not broken. It was adapting.
It was not weak. It was conserving strength
for the next wave, the next siege, the next small war.
Now I listen differently.
When the hands shake, I hear: we are still here.
When the knees buckle, I hear: we are still trying.
When the mind fogs, I hear: we are resting, we are resting.
The body speaks in whispers, not shouts,
and I have finally learned to lean in close.
Today, I watched sunlight pool on the floor
and felt, for one moment, no pain.
The body let me have this.
It gave me the gift of ordinary joy—
the way the dust motes danced, the way the cat stretched,
the way I could breathe without counting.
And I understood:
the body does not owe me wellness.
It owes me nothing.
It has already given me everything:
another day, another chance, another breath
drawn from the same stubborn lungs
that refused to quit.
So I will stop apologizing for what it cannot do.
I will praise it for what it does:
it wakes. It tries. It endures.
It holds my heart like a secret
it has never once considered telling.
The body knows what the world forgets—
that strength is not a roar.
Sometimes, it is the soft sound of survival,
the quiet pulse of still being here,
the small, persistent flame
that will not, cannot, go out.
Notes From the Judge
I was instantly captivated by this piece. The line, “the alphabet of shivers, the grammar of a fever’s climb,” really stuck out to me, and as such, I absolutely loved the figurative language used in this piece. It was very beautifully said, had an inspiring message, and I loved how it delved into so many little details about what it’s like to be disabled.
Manju Devi (she/her) is a writer from Bhojpur, Bihar, specializing in poetry and flash fiction. Her writing, often rooted in the vernacular spirit and rural tapestry of her region, condenses profound observation into evocative, concise forms. She finds equal power in the expansiveness of a poem and the focused resonance of a short story, establishing a distinct voice in contemporary Indian literature.