CERAMIC

Pain was always this familiar stranger. It always appeared with a foreign accent, but each time, I

knew it in the way my heart aches, in the lies a lover’s eyes hold, in the vanity of trying to reach

God. Its touch felt like a million laser beams frying my soul, draining me of whatever seemed

human—it was refining in that way. It was there in my first show as a woman; in coming years I

would doubt the credibility of this show—i felt like an extravagant god, bleeding like my body

was made for this sole purpose. It creeps under my skin on days my mistakes play out in

memory like vengeful spells. It is the thing I make compact in my fears.

Now, pain sleeps. Pain never sleeps, so I induce this sleep. It starts with me taking

several pills to numb the years of fibrosis or whatever the doctor called it; I have no name for the

condiments my body holds. Heartbreak was the breakfast I was served from a lover's pot, but I

chose to smile to the world while my heart burns[this was another shot at putting pain to sleep].

Now, I watch my blood drop onto the ceramic tile as a metaphor for the pain alive in me, and I

just stare—at the blood, at the pain, at the world. I knew I had mastered putting pain to sleep

when a friend tells me that I shine in ways the world can't understand. As if jealous of my shine,

pain awakens in legion, this time morphing into everything hormonal. My body becomes a rebel,

but I tame it with chanting God is the greatest.

On this day, my body speaks in a riotous language, so I see a doctor. After a series of

tests and a feeling of the weight beneath this pretty person, he asks what I am made of to have

been able to share a room with this tumour —by room he meant my body. I tell him that I am

ceramic—breakable, but solid. This was never about the pain, I had become that element of

wonder resident in my writings. I had become a female masterpiece.

©2025 Adanna Ifem