The Music Beneath My Skin

At Duke Hospital,

they wired me up

like a broken marionette—

electrodes blooming across my limbs,

silver petals designed to catch

the static of movement.

I always knew

my muscles danced.

Not graceful arabesques—

but fractured motions,

uncontrolled shivers before the storm.

Jerks that embarrassed my children

(pink-cheeked, eyes averted),

sidesteps that made my husband sigh—

“You know I can’t dance, sweetheart.”

They thought it was nothing.

Nerves misfiring.

A ghost in the machine.

But then the machine began to sing.

Not a beep. Not data.

But music.

Real music.

Low, guttural tones—

like whale song,

like something buried long ago

trying to surface.

A rhythm pulsing through my spine,

ancient and tender,

as if my ancestors

were humming inside me.

No one else hears what I hear.

The technician tilts her head,

distinguishing test tones

from overbearing static.

She hears only what she needs—

the results she seeks.

But I hear it.

A lullaby made of lightning.

A hymn composed in marrow.

A drumbeat from before language—

a song I will never forget.

I left that room

marked.

Fundamentally

changed.

Now, at night,

I sway to rhythms

others cannot hear.

Not symptoms. Not science.

Music I cannot name.

Only presence.

A music beneath my skin

no one can see—

but I feel it,

always.

And that,

that is real enough

to matter.

⸻

Author’s Note:

This poem was born in a hospital room where wires and electrodes tried to map what my body already knew — that something inside me was moving beyond my control. During an EMG, I listened to the static of my own nervous system and heard something else: music. Not metaphorically, but viscerally. Deep, rhythmic pulses no one else seemed to notice.

That moment revealed more than a diagnosis — it offered a kind of private language. A lullaby of lightning. A hymn in the bones. This poem lives in the space between science and mystery, between what’s measured and what’s felt. Not everything real can be graphed or explained.

Some truths hum quietly beneath the skin, waiting for us to listen.