My poem “How to feel beautiful” was published today in The Deaf Poets Society. It’s a reflection on chronic pain.
This poem rejects the notion that we have to be pretty above all else. Beauty is a feeling. When you’re in constant pain, sometimes it’s hard to smile, get out of bed, go to work, deal with other people. But this is something those with chronic pain and disabled people do every single day.
Tell yourself you’re beautiful
so you start feeling it.
That is why the poem ends in space, outside the world. It ends in our blood and the stars. Because even with chronic pain, even if you are blind or deaf, even if you are an amputee, even if you are neurodivergent, even if you feel like all your spoons are full and spent, even then
your blood is still
made up of iron from ancient stars.
Thanks for reading.