Poetry

Locked in a relationship

By Tracey Mitchell, American woman with a disability

My roommate and I will be celebrating our eight-year anniversary this year. We met, I guess, by chance and he knocked me off my feet.

For the first year and a half, everything he did made me weak in the knees. It was not always easy to tell, but he really had a hold on me. For our two-year anniversary he gave me a wheelchair. It sounds like a strange gift, but I sort of expected it. It was nice enough, as wheelchairs go, but for a long time I wouldn't take it out of the house, so he bought me more gifts.... forearm crutches, canes, leg braces and even a walker. He was not very romantic. For our three-year anniversary, he surprised me with a motorized wheelchair. By now, I wasn't thrilled with our relationship, but this wheelchair was nice. I took it everywhere. For the next year or so our relationship was pretty uneventful. He didn't bother me and I didn't bother him. He must have sensed that I really didn't want him around because for our five-year anniversary, he wanted to do nothing but keep me in bed. I guess that was his idea of romance. Year six and year seven have also been pretty uneventful on his part. I'm wondering if he has run out of gifts to give me. Over the years I have tried to get him to leave, told him that I didn't want to be bothered and he should just leave me alone, but he's very persistent and won't go away. So here we are approaching our eighth year, and I am wondering what he is going to give me this time. I can't say I'm looking forward to it because he never gives me anything that I want...oh well.

By the way, you may actually know my roommate. His name is Multiple Sclerosis.
© 2002

calligraphy

This Poem Is About Surviving a Mental Institution

By Tina Minkowitz, American woman with a disability

You had not forgotten who you were that time.

When they took you like a piece of raw meat
wrestled to the ground
hung up in Ereshkigal's castle underground

When they bound you stripped you of skin hair eyes
raw like a potato wet and clean
scarred and dirty
black flesh rotten with flies

When they took you like a lost angel free in flight
so the romantic vision gave you
and shot you to hell with pain

When they looked at you like a clean slate
When they made you beg for more to ease the pain
When they corrupted you by telling you there was no choice
When your vision went black with no choice
No choice to accept their pain or fight and receive more pain
no choice
no choice

Something was changed that day
but you held quiet inside you the seed or the hope
(of the seed)
Did you wait your whole life for it to burst into flame?

calligraphy

Visions of Healing

By Penny Parkes, AFHM member

I thought I knew.
What my healing
was supposed to look like.
But I didn't.
There will be no total regeneration of my body,
with, at most, a slight limp,
to remind myself of the road I once travelled.
I have joints that have been eaten away.
And good-byes to say.
I will not recuperate all my losses.

I thought if I fought long and hard enough
To take back what I had lost long ago,
I would get back my body, whole and intact.
I thought there was no healing
without the wholeness of having
my wounds effaced from by body -
without the strength
to protect myself from devastation.

I was wrong.
Because I know the arms of healing
stretch out to include me.
And I have heard that,
to those who quest long enough,
comes a vision of healing
where wholeness and strength are measured
by the number of caresses a person
lavishes on her battle scars.

© 1997

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