I laughed, not because it was funny, but because I’d seen it all before.
The same tired tropes, the same old pain, the same body declared a war.
An illness with an illness, a misery made art,
A slow disappearance striking cold and sharp and smart.
How many books could tell the same story and give it a different name?
How many lives could fall apart before it stopped being the same?
They made it sound so sacred, the suffering, the pain,
As though there was something lovely in having nothing left to gain.
I kept reading, half amused by how predictable it could be.
Another character hating their reflection, another line that felt like me.
And wasn’t that the strangest part, the thing I couldn’t quite ignore?
I laughed at all the things I knew, then turned the page for more.
Outside, the first real cold had settled heavy in the air,
The kind that slips beneath your skin and leaves you standing there,
The kind that makes the world go quiet, numbing you for a while,
Until you almost can’t remember how it ever felt to smile.
There were quiet lines for every day, a precise and silent count
Of taking less than you were given, measuring down the amount.
Of trying to make a body smaller, needing less to be enough.
I knew those lines. I knew that fear. I’d written my own somewhere,
Keeping track of every day I thought I took more than my share.
And still, I laughed. How could I not? They’d captured it so well,
The quiet little tragedy, the private kind of hell.
They gave the pain a purpose, made the suffering profound,
As if you needed pretty words to make a life worth writing down.
But reaching the end, I turned back, tracing every act.
The lines were still the same, the ink hadn’t moved an inch,
Yet something in the words I’d mocked made my stomach twist.
I read them again, and once again. What once felt far away
Was standing quietly in the room, with nowhere left to stray.
I’d thought I knew the story, that I’d seen it all before,
But every line I read again became a closing door.
The room grew cold. My hands held tight against the final page.
I’d laughed at all the clichés, dismissed them as a phase,
As if knowing how the story went could keep me safe from harm,
As if recognizing the trap meant I’d never lose my calm.
I looked down at the paper, at the ink beneath my thumb.
I’d spent so long believing I was different, that I couldn't be this dumb,
That this story wasn't mine to claim, that I was standing clear.
But the more I read, the less was left between myself and here.
I wanted to laugh again, to call it fake, to claim they didn't know,
To pretend the author guessed at things I’d never dared to show.
But the words stayed printed on the page, and nothing left to hide,
And for once I couldn’t close the cover and leave it all inside.
I’d picked up the book to mock the grief between every little line,
At the way they made a sickness sound so holy, so divine.
I stopped laughing for a second and put the instruction book away.
Cause I knew the book by heart,
My words on full display.