Zebra Seeking Spoons

This morning,
my body loosened its grip.

The ache stepped back,
the fatigue softened,
and for a few precious hours
I remembered who I am
beneath the symptoms.

I moved through the day
without calculating every step,
without measuring every ounce of energy,
without wondering
what pain would demand of me next.

For a little while,
I felt free.

Hope rushed in too quickly.

I began making plans,
dreaming of possibilities,
imagining a life not ruled
by limitations and flares.

I thought,
Maybe today is different.

But chronic illness is often cruel
in the way it gives and takes.

The pain returned
without warning.

A familiar ache became a roar.
The exhaustion settled heavily in my bones.
The body that felt like an ally this morning
became a battlefield again by evening.

And the grief wasn’t only for the pain.

It was for the glimpse.

The glimpse of what life could be.
The glimpse of who I could be
if my body did not constantly pull me backward.

There is a special kind of heartbreak
in feeling well enough to remember
everything you are missing.

A few good hours can feel like a gift,
but sometimes they feel like a loss too—
a reminder of a life that remains
just beyond reach.

I sit with the frustration,
the anger,
the despair of watching the door open
only to have it slam shut again.

Yet even here,
in the disappointment,
those few hours still matter.

They are proof that beneath the pain,
beneath the exhaustion,
beneath all the ways illness tries to define me,

I am still here.

The person who laughed this morning,
who felt light,
who felt hopeful—

she did not disappear when the symptoms returned.

She is waiting.

And though I cannot control
when the next good hour will come,

I hold on to the memory of this one,

a small flame against the darkness,

a reminder that even when pain returns,

it is not all that I am.