Aiming for Grace by Means of Crutch and Dog

Each day I wake and find that I'm still disabled, or I'm still a person with a disability or I'm still perceived as a person with a disability or what have you. It's very difficult in the crucial moments before rising from bed to absorb these poly-semous hieroglyphs and then, as I brush my teeth with Bryl Cream, or Neo-sporin it gets worse. And the day goes forward in all its steepnesses. Hundreds per day. The staring of strangers, worse than you can imagine. They think I don't know. And the multiple small indignities that accrue because of physical difference carry on all day like some kind of out of control adding machine. Tacka tacka tacka.

Grace is of course a spoiled idea in Christian terms as it implies forgiveness from God and when I think about disability I don't want any forgiveness.

I say these solid objects, the oak table, the poplars outside the window,
do not need forgiveness.

Grace is in the lines of your face.
People with disabilities think with their bones.

S.K.

Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University View all posts by stevekuusisto