This paper examines the ways in which I have come to terms with a sudden onset of chronic pain by viewing it through the lens of my own queer identity and exploring this relationship within my art practice. It shows how my queerness has allowed me to accept the contradictions that come with chronic pain: the heaviness it can place on my body, as well as the joy my new ways of working have brought me. In the description of my installation, fragile: please touch, I explain the reasoning behind my use of soft sculpture and collage as coming from a need for touch and comfort, and as a denial of wholeness in favor of the possibilities offered by fragmentation. I further contextualize the imagery in this work by presenting historical depictions of the hand in art, as well as of pain in art. Throughout this paper, I also expand on the social dimensions of chronic pain using the work of several key authors in queer theory and disability studies that have greatly contributed to my understanding of the subject. fragile: please touch presents a pain that demands attention, calls for the making of meaning, refuses solutions, and asks simply to be held.