My body tells stories
I never agreed to—
a tightening in the chest
that whispers danger
when all I’m facing
is an ordinary morning
It lies in the language
of trembling hands,
in the sudden quickening
of breath
that insists
I am still standing
in yesterday’s fire
My pulse rehearses old scripts,
repeating scenes
I no longer believe
It remembers wounds
I worked hard to forget
and calls them warnings
even when the room is quiet
My body lies
because it cannot distinguish
memory from threat
ache from warning
fatigue from failure
It tells me
I am breaking
when I am only bending
It tells me
I am alone
when I am only afraid
It tells me
this pain is permanent
because it cannot imagine
anything but now
And still—
I listen
Because beneath the lies
is a truth my body
cannot articulate:
it is trying
to keep me alive
Even when it shakes
even when it misremembers
even when it mistakes
tenderness for danger
silence for abandonment
love for loss—
my body lies
only because
it learned too early
how fragile I was
And I forgive it—
every time
© Ron Simpson Jr.
September 3, 2026
