Poem: Burnt Out

I’m tired.

Not the kind of tired that sleep can fix,

Not the kind that a nap will erase,

But the kind that settles in your bones,

that makes your soul feel heavy,

dragging behind you like chains on cracked pavement.

Doctor appointments every other day—

waiting rooms, white walls, fluorescent lights,

cold stethoscopes and colder hands

poking, prodding, prescribing,

like I’m some machine they can just reboot.

“Try this. Try that. Let’s run more tests.”

Another needle. Another vial.

Another scan that won’t give me answers.

Just more questions. Just more waiting.

Just more of the same.

I am so sick that I can hardly sit up.

My hands shake, my body betrays me,

legs too weak to hold the weight of a life

I barely get to live anymore.

My freedom? Gone.

My dreams? Out the window.

While life moves on without me,

I stay stuck here, locked inside this failing frame,

a cage I never asked for,

a disease with no cure.

Tell me—

where is the light at the end of the tunnel?

Because all I see is more tunnel.

All I feel is more decline.

More symptoms stacked like bricks,

building walls around me,

suffocating, crushing.

I don’t want to die,

but I don’t want to live like this.

Not like this.

Not tethered to tubes and timelines,

not drowning in medical bills and broken promises.

I want to breathe without effort,

I want to move without pain,

I want to be free of this relentless, merciless, endless suffering.

I want to close my eyes and sink into the silence,

where nothing hurts,

where nothing exists.

-Giusiana