I’m wounded.

How do you explain a war with no blood,

a battlefield beneath the skin,

where the enemy wears your face

and the fight never ends?

*

It doesn’t knock before it enters.

It doesn’t scream—just whispers,

slow and cruel,

like a blade tracing your nerves,

Tracing every nerve in your belly

The aches in your body and soul,

tightening, twisting—

a slow implosion, a body swallowing itself whole.

*

Never deep enough to kill,

just enough to remind you

it’s always there.

*

I wake up tired from battles I don’t remember fighting.

I stand, and my body folds like a letter never meant to be read.

I move, and my bones grind against silence,

my muscles ache from carrying ghosts

no one else can see.

*

I say, “I’m in pain,”

but my skin is smooth, unbroken,

so the world doesn’t believe me.

I say, “I’m exhausted,”

but my lungs still rise and fall,

so they tell me to try harder.

*

They only count what they can measure,

only fear what they can see.

But what of the wars that rage behind the ribs?

What of the limbs that betray,

the immune system that turns mercenary,

the body that has forgotten its own name?

*

How do you fight when the battlefield is your own flesh?

How do you heal when no one believes you’re wounded?