There are expenses that can be counted, and then there are the ones that never appear on a receipt.

Some costs can be measured in medical tests, medications, insurance claims, waiting rooms, expensive equipment, nutrition plans, and the extra shifts worked just to make ends meet.

Others are measured in dreams deferred, chronic pain, invisible grief, and the quiet labor of carrying dwindling hope through looming disappointment.

This poem is about what it feels like when simply existing seems to come with a price tag, and how the greatest costs are often the ones the people around you will never see.

This poem is for anyone who has ever been frustrated by what simply existing has cost them.





“Expensive”


My body feels expensive
In all the wrong ways
Not like make up and lashes
Or fancy camera flashes
It’s another medical test
That I have no way to pay


This body feels expensive
Like it costs me so much
I think of all the calories
I counted for lunch
A big body sipping sprite
With cucumber to munch
While staring at my hourly
Too few numbers to crunch


This body feels expensive
For everything that I lose
From the blood they draw
To more gross glucose juice
From the only line
In every pregnancy test
To the pain in most my movements
And the grief in my chest


I feel expensive
In what I feel I’ve cost others
Dreams crashing down around me
I may never be a mother
I’m undercover
Wanting to be locked away
But I engage and smile
Who cares to hear this anyway?


I long for kindness
The kind you can give yourself
When you know you can’t do more
When you put that “thing” on the shelf
This life feels messy
And too expensive for me
Beyond the ways you might imagine
My soul just longs to be free

Beyond the ways you might imagine
I’m billed for living…


Beyond the ways you might imagine
My life has so many fees…


Beyond the ways you might imagine
My soul just longs to be free-

Of every
Single
Cost
Racked up
Existing as me