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by Sonya Huber We have two broad categories to describe illness and pain: acute and chronic, which seem to mark opposite ends of a spectrum, an either-or, implying that what is chronic is not acute. The narrative of acute action grips us: the bite of the snake and the reeling backward in sudden agony, and a “riveting story of a quick injury seems to demand speedy redress.” 1 Branding a condition like loneliness as an “epidemic” is a desperate attempt to gain attention in ou

by Jacqueline Doyle In the dream, Mom and I are arguing about my aunt Maddy. Again. I’m tense, my chest tight. Which story has my mother just told? The one about Maddy pilfering change from her purse as a teenager? Or some expensive purchase Maddy made? “My little sister just never understood the value of a dollar.” I seem to have entered this scene in the middle and missed the beginning. The scene is familiar enough. We were always arguing about Maddy. Mom and I sit at oppo

by Gloria Ogo They taught me to name my body by what it lacked as if absence were the truest form of truth. But I have learned to measure myself in constellations instead. Every scar, a planet. Every brace, a ring of Saturn. Every pill, a prayer orbiting some soft interior moon. The world says: overcome . But I say: become . I say the revolution is not in walking again, but in staying still and making stillness holy. My wheelchair croons like a hymn. My cane speak

When You Said “Do You Meditate” I Heard “Medicate” and proceeded to overshare, pharmaceutical this and that, monoclonal antibodies and the chances of receiving them. I have not meditated in months, though during the shutdown, I did it every morning – and I painted, colored in adult coloring books, collected stones on long walks. I read the Bible again, listened to old favorite songs, anything to achieve that magic calm. I confess now that I am terrible at meditation, fail at

by Alizabeth Worley is the first thing someone says to me, when finally, I dress, put on shoes and compression stockings, gather my phone, keys and wallet to drive to some event or another, after what has been most likely years since last we spoke. How do I explain? When I go home, I will barely be able to leave my bed even to grab juice or a bowl of cold veggie roast from the fridge for days, and that is if our meeting is short, an hour or less. This week, I will not take my

the poem does nothing for me. i feel cut off to a certain type of thinking. i am afraid. the poem tells a story, shares a moral, builds a metaphor. i am falling back into exhaustion. sometimes this hum comes back and i think i can read poems again. the truth is that something in me died and i cannot resuscitate it. this has been true many times in my life. change is the only constant. sometimes the hums returns and i think i’m coming back to life, think the pain is gone, thin

The Fifth Day of the Cruelest Month Stand with brittle bones and feel this day ticking like a cardinal’s morning call. You are the gloss, the bill, the pinkish feet. You are also the empty crop, the stomach lined with plastic, the glorious cloaca waiting to pass eggs. Into the world, a miracle and another, each pigment- speckled. Lizards make their way to rock, their bodies nearly black in the still-cold air. They look like burned human parts separated from the whole. But tha

by Katie Darby Mullins Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome is a disorder that affects the connective tissues in the body, which, in the author, causes hypermobility at every joint she’s found and contributed to a stroke she had in January 2017. How old was I when I became you When my body/broken learned How to slide pieces together While the brain— me?— Made sure no one noticed? “Your Memory is not my memory,” My friends say, my family. Of course. I didn’t want you to know. In fact, I was

by Alec Finlay ratio of the possible limit : limitless some live their lives in (brackets) while others dash– the concept of visibility is the summit invisible illnesses are the clouds our hands can sign the names of the mountains gathering new meanings with our fingertips someone who runs up mountains can learn from those who only sit and gaze we have a right to altitude to hold our heads above the clouds someday we all sink back to our resting view if all meaning is a trans

side effects to talking my voice loses its balance. words get tired, they slur. they become a mess of sound. unpronounced. my vocal cords seize. my brain no longer understands the english language. my tongue becomes languid, falls into a coma. my voice box closes its doors. my esophagus has a twelve verbatim pile up. i swallow the dead and the injured have amnesia. side effects to spasms or ticks, or tremors. my head jolts to the left three times in rapid motion. the stars m

Naturally Green of pine before blue of sky. Then what. Perhaps something important : what happens next is for you to decide as the sunlight bombards the earth and the earth in turn releases infrared energy that makes my skin feel almost too warm. I could think about anything I manage to think about and still the basket of my heart would lose precious contents. I could ask am I here or not here and still inconsequentiality would bloom. What does it mean to matter. Is this also

by Sandra Gail Lambert “ Real people who survived the unsurvivable ” is how the podcast OutAlive describes itself. Just from the name, we know these people don ’ t die. But that doesn ’ t mean no one else did or that they emerged with all their limbs (parachute snags on a cliff), their mental abilities (brain-eating virus), or even their faces (bear attack) intact. The podcast doesn ’ t have new episodes anymore, but I listen to the old ones again and again. Mostly, I liste

by Sumitra Singam The sac within my body will not expand to hold a baby. A child is born to a woman who cannot mother her, so I become her mother. She has eyes like a long curve of beach when they are closed. When they are open, they are the ocean itself. When I take my top off the first time with this man, I want to cross my arms. I say, “I feel vulnerable.”. He laughs and repeats the word “vulnerable,” twisting its syllables. I feel that twist like it is a pinch at my nippl

by Gabe Montesanti “Lose Yourself” is an excerpt from my book, Drag Thing: A Memoir of Mania and Mirrors , (Arsenal Pulp Press, April 2026). The book chronicles my immersion in the drag scene in St. Louis, Missouri and the way in which my drag persona and my rapid- cycling mania gradually become indistinguishable from each other. This chapter takes place in the first half of the book when I am befriending Rocky B. Goode, a non-binary drag performer, contending with difficulti

by Brenna Womer Brenna Womer (she/they) is a queer, sober, childfree, Latine prose writer, poet, and artist. She's the author of two full-length collections, Unbrained (FlowerSong Press, 2023) and Honeypot (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), and three chapbooks—most recently, Dear Mom (Petrichor, 2025). Her work across genres has appeared in North American Review , Blackbird , DIAGRAM , Pinch , Indiana Review , and elsewhere. She's an Assistant Professor of English teaching in the MFA p

by Catherine Garbinsky Catherine Garbinsky is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee, where they are a PhD candidate at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and serve as poetry co-editor for Grist . Catherine has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, and Cream City Review.

by Zach Powers The Migraine Diaries is a novel that follows a migraineur for the year following the death of his best friend, KJ. While fully fictionalized, it draws heavily from my real life circa 2005, when I had migraines several times a week and always felt as if one were about to occur. I’ve never not had migraines as an adult, but this year-long period was far worse than anything I’ve experienced before or since. Overall, the novel is an investigation of how chronic il

by Rachel Drouillard I used to type faster than her. Now, I wouldn’t stand a chance. She types loudly too, punching away at the keys on her compact silver laptop as she asks me questions. “You’re here for neck pain, right?” “Yeah.” Technically, I suppose. It’s the recent numbness in my hands that really brings me here. My typing speed has gone from 110 words per minute to less than 60. But my doctor seems convinced that numbness and pain are related. I have cervical spondylo

by Matt Kendrick lives in a lighthouse a hundred leagues from the sea. The house is a tower. The tower is still finding its feet. It was pulled down. It was put up. The waves here are silent. They are green. They are billowing fields that silently weep. Little boy lost never goes in those fields. His world is the house. The house is a harbour. He saw a real harbour once. He saw the batter of combers. He heard the howling of wind. He scrubbed the teary brine of the ocean from

by Court Ludwick Mixed media, collage; scanned linocut and charcoal layered on found paper. Court Ludwick is the author of These Strange Bodies and the founding editor-in-chief of Broken Antler . Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, and Best Microfiction, and can be found in EPOCH , Washington Square Review , Denver Quarterly , and elsewhere. Court is currently based in Minneapolis, where she is working on a novel, a poetry collection, and