Pain is usually cast as an intruder, something that breaks in and has to be fought off. Iao13 does the opposite and gives it a seat at the table. In "Pain", the speaker greets the feeling the way you would greet someone who always turns up: "My best friend has come back to me yet again." The words "yet again" carry a tiredness that sits oddly beside the warmth of "best friend", and the poem lives in the gap between affection and exhaustion.
The central idea is that suffering can turn into a relationship, one so dependable it becomes hard to give up. "It is a sadness I get addicted to" is the bluntest line, and the next one explains why: "A thing such as a hobby can never compare." A hobby is what a well-meaning person might suggest as a cure, and the speaker waves it away. Pain offers what hobbies can't, which is intensity, presence, and the certainty that it will show up.
The imagery is sparse but pointed. The only simile is the crow: pain "speaks to me out loud like a crow." Crows are harsh, black, and associated with omens, and "out loud" makes the feeling a noise rather than a mood. It does not whisper. It caws. Then comes "the void of nothing", a phrase that tangles itself. A void is already emptiness, so "void of nothing" almost says the opposite, an emptiness that is full. Whether or not that is deliberate, it fits the idea of a mind where the only thing present is the one thing the speaker wishes were absent, or perhaps the one thing they are glad is there: "its always there."
The poem's pronouns shift quietly. For most of it, pain is "it". Then two short lines widen out: "It always finds you. / Especially when your lost." The speaker moves from private confession to a general "you", as if turning to the reader. The poem then returns to its opening, with a change. "Yet again" becomes the shorter "back again", and a surprise has turned into routine.
The most striking image is the colour red: "I look up and down and all I see is red." Looking "up and down" suggests frantic scanning, a person with no horizon to fix on. Red could mean anger, blood, alarm, or simply a blur that fills the eyes, and the poem doesn't choose. The next line, "It fades away, such as the screams," echoes the earlier "such as a hobby" and keeps the speaker's flat, conversational voice. Nobody is said to be screaming, so they may be the speaker's own, or may be only remembered. Because "it" could refer to the red or to the pain itself, the line is ambiguous in a useful way. The screams are fading, not ending, and it is unclear whether that feels like relief or like numbness.
The last line, "Good thing your always with me", is where readers will disagree. It can be read as bitter sarcasm, or as real gratitude from someone who has no other company. The cheerful idiom "good thing" makes it uncomfortable either way. Notice too that the speaker finally says "your" instead of "it". Pain is now addressed directly, like a person in the room, and the friendship is complete.
In form, the poem is eleven short lines, each standing alone, with no rhyme and no regular beat. Most lines are complete statements that stop firmly, so the poem reads like a series of flat admissions, with none of the flow of a speech or a song. The repeated "My best friend" lines work as a frame without needing rhyme. Several spellings, "its" and "your" where "it's" and "you're" are expected, give the text an unpolished look, like something typed quickly in a low moment. I can't say whether that was intended, but it suits the rawness of the voice.
The poem matters because it refuses the expected script. It doesn't call pain a monster, and it doesn't promise recovery. It says something people often find hard to admit, that what hurts can also comfort, simply because it is familiar and always there. The calm of the speaker's tone is the most unsettling thing in it, and plain words and a looping structure are enough to make that calm felt.