The War Inside My Body (A Poem About Lyme’s Disease)

The War Inside My Body

There is a war inside my body.
My brain explodes with bombshells of pain,
the fog of the frontline never clears.
My muscles fire their artilleries
as the dictator feeds on them.
My blood and my heart beat on, beat on,
passing resources along the supply chain,
hoping they are not stolen
by the marauding enemy.
My immune system is under siege,
surrounded and weakening day by day.

But the dictator doesn’t understand that
if I weaken, so does he,
the more he destroys, destroys, destroys.
The dictator only sees the present.
He only wants to survive NOW—
to see his children flourish
in a ripe and supple landscape
that shrivels and decays the longer he resides here.
Me—my own muscles, my brain, my blood—
overrun and oppressed
subdued and subjected.

This war is painfully intense,
and it feels as if victory will surely be his.
But I will fight for freedom
so that verdant things, healthy things, fertile things
grow in my heart, my flesh, my mind once more.
Someday,
I will run along the pathways of the earth,
and my imagination will fly amongst starlit skies,
and the war inside my body
will be no more.

Photo by momente/Shutterstock.com.