Zebra Seeking Spoons

My skin remembers

what my mind tries to forget—

the bend, the bruise, the tear

The subluxation

that arrives without warning,

like a guest who never knocks.

Joints slip out of place

as easily as thoughts

in an exhausted brain.

I become

a house with loose hinges,

creaking

when the weather changes.

In danger of toppling at the slightest wind. 

They say

but you don’t seem sick—

as if pain

needed an audience,

as if the struggle

wasn’t already loud

in the silence of my body.

Some days I am held together

by duct tape and determination,

with bones that ache

and a spine

that forgets how to hold me.

But I am still here—

elastic, fragile,

resilient in my unraveling.

Each day a quiet decision

to live

inside a body

that does not always

live with me.