Nothing Is Wrong (But Everything Hurts)

Stable doesn’t mean safe. It means you haven’t died—yet.

You know what’s worse than collapse?

Surviving it quietly.

This poem is not about illness. It’s about what happens when your body becomes a performance. When your pain is so practiced it no longer alarms anyone—not even you.

They called me stable.
They called me fine.
They called me functional.

But what they really meant was: you haven’t died yet, so we don’t have to worry about you.

This piece is part of my new series:
”Where Nurses Go To Grieve Themselves”
We don't just burn out.
We bleed out. Slowly. Systematically. Silently.

Some days we save people.
Other days, we just keep ourselves from unraveling in the breakroom.

This is for anyone who’s ever carried a ghost inside their lungs and still showed up to chart.
Still smiled.
Still made coffee.
Still walked back into the room.

Knowing no one would ask:
Are you okay?
Let alone Do you want to stop being strong for once?

But I see you.
I’m writing this because I am you.

If you’ve ever sat on a bathroom floor during your shift and wondered if your body was betraying you—or just tired of pretending it wasn’t hurting—this poem already knows your name.

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📖 Read the full piece below. Feel it. Bookmark it. Send it to someone who needs to know they’re not the only one pretending to be fine.

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Nothing Is Wrong (But Everything Hurts)

a diagnosis carved in silence
No fever. No rupture.
No red blaring warnings in your veins.
The body performs like a trained beast,
hiding the harm in elegant movements,
masking the collapse with breath.

They call you stable.
They call you fine.
They say there’s nothing wrong,
as if the absence of evidence
was the evidence of absence.

You sit in cold rooms,
bare wrists upturned
like offerings no god will take,
trying to name the ache
without sounding insane.

But how do you explain
a pain that blooms only at nightfall,
that sleeps beneath your ribs like an old dog,
that has lived inside you so long
it knows all your passwords?

It doesn’t bleed.
It doesn’t swell.
It just exists—
like fog in the chest,
like glass in the spine,
like hands pressing down where no hands are.

So they send you home.
With empty hands.
With lighter pockets.
With instructions to rest, drink water, breathe.
And you do.
You do all of it.

And still—
the ghost stays.
Curled in your lungs.

Nested behind your eyes.

You smile anyway.
You laugh.
You make coffee.
You become holy in your endurance.
And no one ever says:
She died while living.
Because you never stopped walking.

But it was a funeral
every single day.

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Credits:

© 2025 Solena Vyhra. All rights reserved.
This work is part of the poetry collection Where Nurses Go to Grieve Themselves.
No part of this poem, including text or visual design, may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author.
For inquiries, permissions, or collaborations, please contact: solenavyhra@gmail.com

Illustration and layout by Solena Vyhra.
Typography: Special Elite (poem titles), Signature (author tag).
Published on Substack via Where Silence Becomes Ritual.
🩺 For the exhausted, the invisible, and the almost-broken—who still show up anyway.