The love of my life was clueless
he couldn’t save me
The priveledge of men
Blinds them to reality of women.
The girl who always played by herself
She knows the difference
Alone isn’t always lonely.
We idolize our villains
Giving praise to a billionaire
Even as they steal from us
We expect to be cheated
They give us less for our more
The system is sociopathic
We don’t reward kindness
We reward those who win
We are complicit in our wage theft
The all mighty dollar is king
And our lives spent in servitude.
The hubris in thinking you know me
Hospitals are hell
Doctors don’t trust us
And they don’t listen either
They don’t like us to be smart
Or to be informed enough to say no
They see us as uncooperative children
Disparaging our understanding
They arent partners in our care
They reluctantly ask for consent
But label us an uncooperative
If we dare stand up for ourself
We advocate in a vacume
Against many levels of opression
The world doesn’t like it
When you question its heros.
The definition of true love
Diverged when it comes to passion
I wanted to foster the long coals
You wanted to throw wood on the fire
I don’t want passion that burns bright
That can turn into fierce anger
Or be smothered by boredom
I want admiration and respect
A long term commitment
A tinder that has to be tended
My fire won’t burn down a
forrest.
But it’ll keep us warm for many nights.
Some days I wish I could skip
Pretty is more important than life
Is that it ignores my disability
When illness is not your life
I am not a fragile flower
Or your identified patient
Until I’m dead, I’m surviving
I deserve independentance
And whatever autonomy I can have
Treating me different doesn’t help
It just makes me feel seperate
Treating me as incompetent
Just makes me like you less
It isn’t yours to manage my health
Illness doesnt respect expectations
Symptoms don’t conform to timelines
Your frustration just makes me worse
And all your aims to get me in line
Like your uninformed advice
And you unsolicited help
Are a barrier to your understanding
Give me the respect of personhood
Why must I remind you I’m human?
Academica wants to study
At an early age, life didn’t make sense
What I saw didn’t match what I felt
And I was taught to speak up
So I said what I thought was true
And they assured me I was wrong
That I wasn’t feeling what I felt
And I wasn’t seeing what I saw
Quickly, I learned to doubt myself
And the next time I was incongruent
I participated in my own gaslighting
Thought I didn’t know what I felt
And I didn’t know what I saw
But the contradictions kept coming
What they said and how I felt
But how I felt was consistent
And their orders often conflicted
So I chose to believe in myself
I let myself rebel againt what I’m told
The world still doesn’t make sense
But at least I trust in me.
How did this happen?
I planned to be an novelist
To write great sweeping stories
And call myself an author
But that’s not what I do
Instead, I compulsively summarize
Encapsulate my feeling in words
In this blasted dead art form
I didn’t seek poetry as a goal
But damned if I’m not a poet.
Body positive is about self-love
Body neutrality is about acceptance
Fat liberation is about equal rights
But my body is also defiant
I inflict myself on the world
Skimpy clothes showing it all off
Bright colors and bold patterns
Encouraging passing stares
Challenging disdainful looks
Not here to make you comfortable
Fat and proud and defiant.
Even when you don’t believe
When I look back over my life
The problem with you praying for me
But I can be mad at someone
You question why I talk about it
As if the answer isn’t clear
C’mon, just think for a second,
Imagine where I’m coming from
This lives within me everyday
Were talking about my quality of life
Restricting my daily activity of living
What kind of delusion would it be
If it wasn’t a part of my personality
Not metaphorically but literally
Keeping silent for your comfort
Doesn’t make my life easier
Since I can’t avoid it or deny it
I’m not going to hide it.
Let me be clear
I’m not making anything up
I spend my time isolating
And lying about what I feel
And avoiding the topic of health
Smiling through my discomfort
Actively minimizing my needs
So you won’t ever know
What’s going on with me
Because when I open up
I get shamed by doctors
Teated poorly by bosses
Doubted by my friends
The world isn’t welcoming
People treat me differently
There isn’t a reward for honesty
When it comes to disability.
Remove reason from accomidation
Reject the idea of undue hardship
It leads to false argument
If you already treat your staff shitty
Any request for change is a battle
Doesn’t matter who makes a request
Employers reject workplace change
Even when it’s low cost or no cost
So, this isn’t just about disability
It’s about core labor rights
Most staff have individual needs
We should have tools to do our job
Get flexibility between work and life
Accomidation is considered radical
Because a job is seen as a priveledge
What if staff were seen as valuable
Deserving of a job molding to them
A workplace finding a place for us
Instead of rejection for a bad fit
All staff deserve accomidation
When employers accomidated want
It’s not so radical to accomidate need.
You don’t want to see us
I envy the priveledge of bootstraps
We’re your sickly and old
I was a active kid and also sickly
I played rough and then later suffered
Never fit in school so I was a loner
But my family friends played with me
I had a social group as a teenager
And I matched their social energy
I stated up all night and partied
And then crashed when I went home
It was in my 30s that I saw the pattern
When I act like other people I pay
And the cost is tripple the fun
More days lost than fun gathered
I learned to live a moderate life
Chose stability in my symptoms
I grieved that life wasn’t like others
Gave up on a life I can’t have.
In a culture where tough is praised
My morality isn’t vertical
You are not better than me
And I am not better than you
We are both worthy
And no one is undeserving
No onehad to tell me this
I was born knowing it
My morals are horizontal.
A global pandemic comes
