Poems written from personal experience of having vitiligo
All my life I have written poems. Not for publication, but simply as a way of expressing my thoughts and feelings. I write for myself because I find the process therapeutic. If you also have vitiligo, maybe you will find reading my poems therapeutic too. I hope so. And if you like my vitiligo poetry on this page you might want to check out more poetic ramblings on my All Poetry page.
I don’t claim to be a good poet, by the way. I just enjoy it as a hobby and a means of self-expression. If you have ever felt the creative urge, you’ll know what I mean. I highly recommend you give in to it. Try exploring whatever artistic pursuits interest you. It can be a great way to explore how you feel about your vitiligo. So, if you enjoy writing, painting, sculpting, creating music or any other creative form I urge you to keep doing it. Not only is it the best medicine on earth for the artist but it may also prove to be a healing gift to others.
The first poem I wrote specifically about my skin is simply called “Vitiligo” and you can read it on its own blog page by clicking on the title above.
A Vitiligo Limerick
There once was a baker from Sligo
whose pastries could cure vitiligo.
So temptingly tasty
was all of his pastry
that – oh dear! – “where did all that pie go?”
I wrote the following freestyle poem in the summer of 2013, about three and a half years after starting to re-pigment. It might baffle some readers but I think that anyone who has had widespread vitiligo will recognise the feelings of consternation, powerlessness and loss of identity that accompany the progression of this condition. But I hope that the relief and delight I have tried to convey at the return of my pigment will give others hope that this is not necessarily a one-way journey 🙂
VITILIGO: A Play(room) in 3 Acts
ACT I: Collecting Jigsaw Puzzles
My life has been a series of jigsaw puzzles, the first as pretty a picture as you could wish to see. It never occurred to anyone that anything could mar the image of a bonny baby in all her glorious honey-hued, gurgling perfection.
They never found out who crept into the playroom and stole the first piece. It was only one little piece – the size of a sixpence on the baby’s left ankle. Hardly noticeable. A pity though that such a pretty puzzle should be incomplete.
The next piece to vanish left a leaf-shaped hole in the baby’s back. Did someone accidentally knock over the board? Perhaps the lost pieces are on the floor or down the back of the sofa.
But if that is so, why could they find no trace? Surely it had to be the work of a thief because it did not end there.
The next puzzle was a toddler. How strange that the same pieces were missing here too. Not only that, but a third and fourth piece had gone – the other ankle this time and now a tiny gap at one corner of the child’s mouth. Why would anyone want to remove random pieces of the puzzle? And how did they do it without getting caught?
No one had any answers.
Successive puzzles depicting a panda-eyed schoolgirl, a shy adolescent, a carefully groomed young woman – all plundered by unseen hands – revealed more and more of the blank surface beneath and ever less of the subject herself.
One day I opened a new box and asked myself “Is this puzzle half here or half gone?”
There comes a point when a puzzle ceases to be a picture with gaps and becomes a blank space strewn with fragments like the excavated remnants of an ancient mosaic.
Would some archaeologist dig me up and fill in the blanks to show posterity what I once looked like?
The jigsaw of a woman in her 40s would have been quick to complete, since so few of the pieces actually connected. Scattered across the board, it was impossible to decide if they, or the space between them, were the real object of the exercise.
I suppose it all depends on how you look at it.
Over the course of 50 years my unplanned jigsaw collection progressed from Bonny-Baby to Can-You-Tell-What-It-Is-Yet? What would the next puzzle be called… The-Invisible-Woman perhaps?
If you think jigsaws are frustrating, try my next hobby…
ACT II: Painting by Numbers
Number 1 was the original skin tone, a light golden beige, my favourite pigment.
Number 2 was the colour of nettle rash, mottled and roughly textured.
This was closely followed by number 3, a stark white, applied almost symmetrically in random patterns, some clearly delineated, others splashed carelessly across the canvas like spilt milk. (No sense in crying over it. There is no cure. It won’t kill you.)
There’s nothing quite like summer for bringing out the colours of a painting. A hat and long sleeves were no match for the persistent sun and by the time the picture was finished, the numbered paints ranged from 1 to 20 with a different abstract brush stroke to go with each one. My canvas contained a tortoiseshell patchwork of shades from brilliant white to violet, golden ochre, burnt sienna, chestnut and scarlet.
And yet this was the height of my blue period.
I had to paint by numbers for 50 summers before I could enjoy my third (and final?) pastime…
ACT III: Joining the Dots
By sheer fluke, at the age of 51, I discovered the secret of the missing jigsaw puzzle pieces. They were there all along – just not visible to the naked eye.
They had been starved into transparency but, as I began to feed them, atoms of them materialised like specks of golden ink on blotting paper. Tiny dots like pixels on a grainy satellite image, jostling, overlapping and joining together until they looked something like the missing jigsaw pieces – if a little mottled with mildew.
And gradually the mildew has faded – along with the sense of loss – to reveal glorious, even colour.
Of all the activities I ever found in the playroom of my life, the most cherished, the most miraculous, the most deeply longed-for and appreciated has been this game of Join the Dots – an unremarkable pastime, you may think (if you have never walked in my shoes), but one which has brought me on a return journey along a jigsaw road from
Almost-Invisible
via Can-You-Tell-What-It-Is-Yet?
past Half-Here-Or-Half-Gone?
by way of A-Pity-That-It’s-Incomplete
and finally – if not quite back to Bonny-Baby – then at least back home to a grateful woman of a certain age who can look in the mirror and smile to see her whole self.
Vitiligo: A Play(room) in 3 Acts © August 2013 The Vit Pro
In spite of the context of the following poem, I must stress that I am not, and never have been, a Trekkie!
Beam Me Up, Spotty
I was born an Earthling.
Just like all the other smooth-skinned, one-tone beings on the planet.
But, before long, I started to see grotesquely spotted aliens on the starboard bow – on every bow, as a matter of fact.
Humanoids – but not as we know ‘em, Capt’n.
They were the stuff of sci-fi nightmares.
They terrified me…
… until I realised they were my reflection…
… at which point I was more terrified than before.
I was being pursued…
… by a Terminator- intent on destroying my future self.
It was Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with a twist.
My body, being stolen from me, patch by patch, until I was a fully paid-up inhabitant of planet Vitiligo.
My recognisable life-form, disintegrating before my eyes.
Shattering into an infinite number of colours.
Sucked relentlessly through hypo- pigmented space into a black hole of ever-expanding, blinding whiteness.
I had become other – one of them.
Turned to the Dark Side – or, should I say, the White Side.
Like all self-respecting Body Snatchees, I hid my monstrous self behind a benign disguise.
I became an intrepid cosmeto-naut, covering my alien skin and prepared to wait it out for the duration.
Resistance is useless.
After all, in space no one can hear you scream.
A lifetime spent in Dr Who’s waiting room…
… bigger on the inside than on the outside
(owing to the massive number of double-blind tested drugs stuffed into it by the Galactic Funded Research Empire).
Then, Infinite Improbability presented me with the answer to life, the universe and everything .
It was not forty-two. It was, in fact, the Blue Planet Cure…
… the health-giving goodness of the leafy green earth and the healing rays of our sun.
No longer lost in space,
I had entered a transporter room where abnormal matter is converted into a cloud of shimmering pigment particles and beamed back home to smooth-skinned, one-tone humanity,
amid tele-transports of delight.
Thanks, Spotty…
… for beaming me up!
Beam Me Up, Spotty © February 2014 The Vit Pro
I wrote the next one after seeing a beautiful photo on the internet of a cat with lovely markings and reading that these were, in fact, the result of vitiligo.
Conversation with a vitiligo cat
“How are you feeling, kitty?
You’re looking very pretty.”
“I’m feeling pretty… Purrrr …
because I love my furrrr.”
“Where did you get those speckles?”
“I got them from my freckles!
Because my skin has patches
I have a coat that matches!”
“How strange that you should be
in the same boat as me!
I too have vitiligo,
not that you would think so.
You see, I always hide it
(because I can’t abide it)
with makeup and with clothing.
I live in fear and loathing.
I wish I could begin
to love the skin I’m in
instead of being weak
and feeling like a freak.
But since cats are so wise
it comes as no surprise
that you should somehow relish
a thing that I find hellish.
You wear your spots with pride
and never try to hide.
You see it as your duty
to flaunt your feline beauty.
Please, kitty, do be nice
and give me some advice.
I’m sure that if you do
I’ll learn a thing or two.”
Instead of saying more
I hold my breath in awe
as she looks me in the eye
and purrs her short reply.
“When you’re feeling sad
and your blotches make you mad
I have a cure for that…
… imagine you’re a cat!”
Conversation with a vitiligo cat © April 2014 The Vit Pro
You may also like to read There is no ice age, and my reasons for writing that poem, on my blog entitled Vitiligo: like snow.