If you meet me...
Using my wheelchair
Don’t waste your energy
And mine commiserating
Celebrate with me
That I’m out in the world
With you.
Do say hallo to whoever
Is with me
And then–if you can -
Sit with me awhile
At my level
Don’t make jokes
And eyerolls
About Covid -
I’m a while away
From finding the whole thing funny.
Celebrate with me
My liberation on wheels
Not by referring to them
All the time
Instead
Tell me of your life
Like you used to
Let me do some catching up.
Where you’ve been
What you’ve seen
The struggles–if you like to -
That you have faced.
Burst my bubble
That I’m special
But not too hard.
Let me have
A soft landing
Back Into the embodied world
I will be jealous but not excessively so
of your outings
And empathetic
With your childcare
And caring challenges.
And when you see me
Using a stick
Or walking free
Don’t question
The validity
Of the wheelchair.
I am a hybrid disablee
The chair is an aid when my legs
Or my brain
Are not strong.
Please ask if you can help.
Sometimes the best
Thing you can do
Is help me take a moment
To reset and breathe,
-
So the best is
A moment of companionable
Silence with you
-
Whilst my brain
Catches up
-
With everything
-
It’s learning
-
And my neck gets a rest from holding
itself
at
An angle
Nature never planned for.
And let’s not regard
The fact of the wheelchair
As an emblem of
Capitulation .
No one’s giving up
Nothing’s been fought or lost
There is
No war
Just a change
And an evolution
A reckoning
And a recalibration.
Yes. I do feel it as a loss.
Of course.
Lots of changes
Include grief
But also they hold
The offer of new possibility.
What can ours be?
Will you change alongside me
To enfold my new reality
Into yours?
Can we together extend our
Sense of selves
To see and accept what is?
Can we?
I wrote this on the way back from a meeting at a theatre, the first time I've attended a professional meeting like this using my wheelchair. I tidied it up a bit and since it was #NationalPoetryDay yesterday, I thought I'd mark it with this.
As I posted the audio version just now I realised the more inclusive version for the title should be "If you meet me" but then weirdos will know that we lose a connection to George Melly singing If you see me walking down the street on a Stranglers B-side. Still maybe they are both there somewhere...