When My Toes Go Numb It Will Be Winter
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The body can become a weather report before the sky does.
It is day 10 of the 30/30 Project for Tupelo Press, and I have finished my first week in Indonesia. That sentence sounds like progress, because it is. Ten poems in ten days. One week in a new country. New air, new food, new light, new rhythms. A life with evidence of motion.
But there is also the quieter truth: I am not fine physically.
That is the strange work of living with a chronic health condition. So much energy goes into convincing the world that everything is manageable. Smile at the right time. Stand when you can. Answer messages. Keep walking. Keep writing. Make the illness look smaller than it feels.
The truth is less tidy. Some things are outside my control. My body has its own weather. It gives signals I cannot always translate until they have already arrived. I can worry about that weather, or I can write from inside it.
Today’s poem came from that place.
Day 10 and the strange discipline of showing up
The 30/30 Project asks for a poem every day for 30 days. On the surface, that sounds simple. Write a poem. Send it in. Wake up and do it again.
By day 10, the romance has worn off just enough to reveal the true shape of the work. A daily poem is not built only from inspiration. It is built from repetition. From attention. From the stubborn decision to sit with whatever is present and make something from it.
Some days, what is present is wonder.
Some days, it is fatigue.
Some days, it is the ache behind the smile, the numbness in the toes, the knowledge that the body has entered the room before the mind has found language for it.
That is where discipline becomes more than productivity. It becomes a way of listening. A daily poem does not ask me to feel well. It asks me to be honest. That is harder, and more useful.
Writing every day while living with illness changes the idea of success. Success is not always a finished, polished poem that announces itself with confidence. Sometimes success is noticing the mist. Sometimes it is naming the bruise. Sometimes it is getting one true line down before the body pulls the curtains closed.
The project gives the page a deadline, but the body gives it urgency.
The first week in Indonesia
A first week anywhere can feel like walking through a dream while holding a grocery list. Everything is specific. Nothing is familiar yet.
Indonesia has arrived through the senses first. Humidity on the skin. The smell of food being cooked nearby. Motorbikes passing like punctuation. Green everywhere. Air that carries weight.
There is beauty in that kind of sensory overload, and there is exhaustion too. A body with chronic illness does not always separate wonder from strain. The same walk that feeds the imagination can empty the muscles. The same damp air that makes the world look softened can make the body feel heavy.
Travel often gets described as freedom, but illness adds another layer. Every new place asks the body a question: Can you do this here?
Can you sleep here?
Can you recover here?
Can you keep your balance here?
Can you stay present when your symptoms refuse to be polite?
I do not ask these questions dramatically. They are practical. They are part of the math. Living in a body that needs extra care means measuring the day by more than desire. It means noticing shade, stairs, temperature, distance, water, rest.
Still, I am here. I am writing. I am learning the sound of rain in a new country.
That counts.
The performance of seeming fine
The hardest part of a chronic health condition is not always the pain, or the symptoms, or the uncertainty. Sometimes the hardest part is the performance around it.
Convincing the world you are fine becomes its own full-time role.
There are reasons for this. People get tired of hearing about illness. Some do not understand what they cannot see. Some mean well but say the wrong thing. Some want a clean story, a recovery arc, a brave face, a lesson.
So the person who is sick learns to edit.
“I’m okay.”
“I’m just tired.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“I can manage.”
These lines are not always lies. They are often partial truths. I can be sick and still laugh. I can be unwell and still write. I can need rest and still want life. I can have symptoms and still be more than symptoms.
But the performance has a cost. It asks the body to be quiet when it is already trying to speak. It asks the mind to translate pain into something socially acceptable. It makes the sick person responsible not only for surviving the condition, but also for making other people comfortable with it.
That can be lonely.
There is a sentence in today’s poem that holds this contradiction better than any explanation could:
I am sick, otherwise I am healthy.
That line feels plain until it opens. It contains the absurd logic of invisible illness. It is both true and impossible. It says the body is failing in one way and functioning in many others. It says illness can live beside vitality. It says health is not one solid category. It has rooms.
There are days when I feel healthy except for the part of me that is not. There are days when that “except” becomes the whole room. There are days when I can almost forget, and days when my body reminds me before breakfast.
The poem does not try to solve that. It lets the contradiction stand.
Today’s poem
Seasons Katerina Canyon The clouds have fallen. Mist speckles my skin like sand. Two points of crisp autumn pinch me and let go. This amber skin is bruised. I am sick, otherwise I am healthy. When my toes go numb I will know it is winter.
This poem came out small and sharp. It does not explain the condition. It does not name a diagnosis. It does not ask for sympathy. It gives images instead.
Clouds fall.
Mist touches skin.
Autumn pinches.
Skin bruises.
Toes go numb.
Winter announces itself through the body.
That last movement matters to me. “When my toes go numb / I will know it is winter.” The body becomes the instrument that detects change. Not the calendar. Not the weather app. Not the official season. The toes know first.
That is what chronic illness can do. It makes the body into an early warning system. A barometer. A translator. A witness.
Sometimes the body knows before language does.
The seasons inside the body
The poem’s title, “Seasons,” points outward first. Weather, atmosphere, time passing. But the poem quickly turns the season inward.
Autumn becomes touch. Winter becomes numbness. Mist becomes something that speckles skin. The weather does not stay in the sky. It enters the body.
That feels true to me right now. Indonesia is not winter. The air is warm and wet. The world around me is alive with green. Yet the body can carry its own cold. It can produce its own winter through circulation, pain, fatigue, numbness, inflammation, memory.
This is one of the strange facts of illness: the climate outside and the climate inside can disagree.
A room can be warm while the toes go numb.
A day can be lovely while the body feels bruised.
A person can look well and feel unwell.
The mismatch creates a kind of private weather. Others might see posture, clothes, movement, a face. They might see someone functioning. They cannot always see the internal forecast.
Poetry is useful here because it does not need to prove what the body feels. It can simply reveal it. A medical chart might require categories. A conversation might require explanation. A poem can say, “The clouds have fallen,” and let the image do the work.
That does not mean poetry replaces care, treatment, rest, or support. This reflection is personal and informational, not medical advice. But poetry can hold experiences that ordinary language flattens. It can show what it feels like to live in a body that shifts without permission.
Why worry when control is limited?
“The truth is I’m not fine physically, but that is beyond my control, so why worry about it?”
I believe that. I also know belief does not erase fear.
There is a difference between refusing to worry and pretending nothing is wrong. Pretending asks me to deny the body. Refusing to worry asks me to stop rehearsing what I cannot command.
That distinction matters.
I cannot control every symptom. I cannot control whether a flare arrives at a convenient time. I cannot control how other people interpret my face, my energy, or my limitations.
I can control some smaller things:
I can listen sooner.
I can rest before collapse when possible.
I can write truthfully.
I can stop making the illness more acceptable than it is.
I can let the poem say what the conversation cannot.
This kind of control is modest. It does not cure anything. It does not turn illness into a lesson wrapped in ribbon. It simply returns me to the present moment, where the body is real, the page is real, and the next line is waiting.
Worry often tries to impersonate care. It says if I think hard enough about the body, I can protect it from surprise. But chronic illness does not work that way. The body still surprises me. The weather still changes.
So I am trying to practice another response. Notice. Name. Adjust. Continue.
That is not surrender. It is a different kind of strength.
What the poem knows that I am still learning
The poem knows brevity. It does not argue. It does not defend itself. It does not explain why the speaker is sick, how long it has been happening, or whether anyone believes them.
It simply states:
This amber skin is bruised.
That is enough.
I am still learning to trust that enoughness. To let symptoms exist without turning them into a case. To let vulnerability appear without dressing it up as courage. To admit that I am not fine physically, and also that I am still living, still traveling, still writing, still paying attention.
There is a pressure, especially with illness, to make every hard thing meaningful. I resist that. Some pain is just pain. Some numbness is just numbness. Some days are difficult without becoming wise.
But meaning can still appear in the act of telling the truth.
Today, the truth arrived as weather. Mist on skin. Autumn as a pinch. Winter as numb toes. A body trying to report what it knows.
That is the gift of day 10. Not certainty. Not wellness. Not a triumphant story. Just a poem that takes the body seriously.
The work continues
Ten days in, the 30/30 Project has already reminded me that a poem does not have to fix the life that made it. It can be a record. A flare. A small lamp. A breath held long enough to become language.
My first week in Indonesia has reminded me that beauty and difficulty often arrive together. The mist can be gorgeous and the body can hurt. The world can open while the nervous system tightens. I can be grateful and unwell at the same time.
That is not a contradiction I need to solve.
When my toes go numb it will be winter. Even here. Even in heat. Even in a place where the air feels green and the rain comes down warm. The body has its own calendar, and some days all I can do is read it.
Today I read it by writing a poem.
Tomorrow, I will try again.
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