IMAGE DESCRIPTION: An image of a notepad, and pencil with a circular image of Joanna.The title: Severe ME Week 2023 7th -13th August. The ME Association logo (bottom right)

Severe ME Week 2023: Poems

Poems (2 of 4 website blogs)

Goodbye to the career I trained so hard to get
Hello to days filled with pain and regret
Goodbye to dinners out in the crowd
Hello to my bed where even a whisper is loud
Goodbye to make up and feeling a queen
Hello to a face that I am unable to clean
I am too young for this, it's not fair it's insane.
I have too much to do, so I pick up a cane.
The pain hits my body like a ball hits a bat. 
I fall on the bed like it's a big comfy mat
I close my eyes and hope for the best. 
That maybe just maybe all I need is rest.

– By Joanna


M.E. is like a burglar who steals from you
every minute of every day. Its booty is
your energy, half a sackful of cognitive
functions, and whatever else it can find.
Out goes your profession, your social life;
your mobility, vision, memory;
your ability to look after yourself
without help; your idiosyncratic vitality
in short: the way you were in the world.
Hardest though: your intelligence
curls up in a ball and rolls out of reach,
and you lie in wait for those rare instants
when you can seize it by the scruff
of its scrawny neck and pull it
from under bed, for a wee while.

– By Marion Michell

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