Fused Glass

Skin remembers fire

long after the flame is gone.

What once was pliant, breathing,

now cools into something altered

clear, tight, fragile as art

hung in a window no one dusts.

The body learns a new language:

pull, burn, white hush of silence.

Nerves whisper alarms

the mouth grows tired of translating.

Pain becomes a season

with no agreed-upon name.

Doctors speak in diagrams,

in careful gloves and brighter lights.

I nod, polite, while my body

leans away from itself,

as if distance might soften

what has already fused.

There is grief here

not loud, not cinematic

but a thin mourning for ease,

for touch without calculation,

for the simple mercy

of not thinking about skin.

Yet fused glass still catches light.

It bends sun into color,

holds warmth longer than expected.

Even changed, it is not ruined.

Even scarred, it is still

a surface the world moves through.

I learn to tend myself

like a careful artist:

slow heat, patient cooling,

respect for new limits.

Not restoration

but survival shaped with intention.

This body is not broken.

It is transformed.

And though the seams show,

they also tell a story

of lichen sclerosis.