Keep My Shoes Filled

Happy ME/CFS Awareness Day! I wrote this poem last year, after I got too sick for screens but before I got too sick to write. It contains everything I want for every ME/CFS patient, every Long Covid patient, and frankly, anyone who has ever felt the intimate suffocation of being bedbound or housebound — the world, shining, with all of us back in it.

Learn more about the #MillionsMissing due to ME/CFS and the #MillionsMore with Long Covid here: https://www.meaction.net/

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For a world
that stretches farther
than a metre squared
when it inhales

a world that comes racing out
on the out breath

the weather that gets further
than the window

and the window that opens
when your future is closed.

Let it charge in here
like a hungry riot,
let it shout HEY, I’M HERE,
I BROUGHT FLOWERS!

Let it grow an ocean in my bedroom
So that dolphins can high fin me
For getting free,

let it laugh hard enough
that it causes a sheer earthquake
of the heart. Only for god’s sake
let it be loud, let it burst
with colour,

let it restore the vibrancy
that passed me by
in one perfect bite,

let it in one puff of its lungs
pay back these three years in a bed
counting waves of pain
and muscle spasms
like they were sheep.

Let it be the cheque I get years later
from the life accountants
when they realise
how much I’m owed.

Let it be something I splurge on,
something that pops me open
and lets the whole world
cram in. Let it swell me up
and puff me out and send me
sailing across the sky.

Only let the world grow back to me
inch by green inch
until I can walk out and meet it
with my own two palms —

and let me fill my shoes again,
and keep my shoes filled.

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