How to describe intermittent severe pain on the same scale as constant middle-range pain, which I found more debilitating? Attempting to reduce pain that was context dependent to a number just made it clear that there was no way to make this invisible symptom legible to others. And the poet in me found all the metaphors for pain to be limited. “Burning,” “tingling,” “stabbing”—these words did little to describe pain’s reality, which ebbed and flowed according to its own logic. Pain was an empire of its own, well defended against language’s forays against it.
