Ivy Wairimu
Ivy Wairimu is a writer and healthcare professional living with chronic pain. After years of ignoring and minimizing her pain, she’s decided that silence will do her no good. She writes to share her experiences and hopefully channel her pain into something cathartic, meaningful, and/or resonant.
Intermission
It’s a pain-free day
Yet I dwell still
On the ways that these aches
Cast my body into horror stories
Tune my voice into elegies
Turn my eyes into saltwater lakes
Here I am: drowning, wailing, possessed
Living in a body that feels foreign; overridden; overtaken; run-over; stolen; discarded
I’ve had a pain-free day today
Yet I still ruminate on the terror
Because it never stops for long.
Musical Healing, Self-Prescribed
I pull medicine out of me by the line
Clefs, quavers, and crochets noted onto it
A remedy composed intuitively; I needn’t have studied it to understand its magic
I start with a hum, mumbling a song that emerges as I go along
This is me trusting the process, my process
My voice slowly rises from a whisper to a full forte
I imagine it dancing across the width of my back
Its steps massaging my worn muscles
I picture it pressing a kiss to my forehead, temples, cheeks, jaws.
This is my medicine
I concoct it from within me and use it to heal my pain
I am my own medical aid
The pills and injections aren’t my potion anymore
I tire of the rounds of chemicals and stray away from the prescription
Those that have failed to ease my aches, I leave behind
I instead learn my body and find my own way to soothe her.
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