Fatigue’s Say

By: Golan Shahar, Ph.D.

Making Love.

Fatigue: Damn, you’re attractive! Let’s go to bed.

Me: It sounds so tempting. The engine’s dead.

Fatigue: Don’t worry. I’ll do the work for you.

Me: Which is the problem, you always do.

Fatigue: I’ll strip your ring, no vows to keep.

Me: You brag all day. I fall asleep.

Making Room.

The table waits, mugs unwashed.

“Dinner’s ready,” she announces.

“Not hungry,” I grumble—

knowing she won’t listen.

In the next room, two kids run wild,

unattended.

Soon my love will come back from work,

on her way to the bedroom to check on me.

She will pass by the invisible figure,

waiting at the table.

Functional.

“It’s functional,” I hear them saying.

Their white gowns carry the weight of a grim sentence,

white as the hospital’s neon lights,

white as the system’s imperviousness.

As I am slouching into the chair,

my breath reverses its own submission.

The chart says: unremarkable.

My veins respond: fatigue.

Somewhere in the corridor

a printer spits contempt.

And I realize:

“functional” is my own cross to bear.

Golan Shahar is a Professor of Clinical–Health Psychology at Ben-Gurion University and Adjunct Professor at Yale University School of Medicine. His work bridges clinical and health psychology, psychoanalytic and existential theory, and poetic narrative. He has published extensively on depression and suicide, chronic illness, and stress, and has authored two books. His poetry, written both in English and in Hebrew, explores subjective, health-related experience, psychological suffering and resilience, and the interface between persons and their social environment, particularly in the context of health and medicine.