T.C. Long has also recorded an audio version of this piece, attached below. It is his personal mission to include audio alongside all his works, both to increase accessibility and to lend additional humanity and dimensionality to disabled folks in media.
The hydrangeas did not bloom this year
It was the soil
or, I don’t know
the sun
And for the first time
in forty years,
all the flowerbeds of Mashantum
were utter flops
open sandpits perfect playgrounds
for obtuse, indecent dogs
Garden parties were disasters
The hydrangea festival passed
in bashful memory
like a fart
And all the cerulean blues
and cobalt hues
people wait for their whole winters—
Kaput
All stalks this year
Blame climate change
Better luck next season
I can’t walk outside anymore
Can’t do a hill
Die at every odd angle
Like a lost protractor
they’d find me sprawled and
geometric on the ground
All limbs from
prescribed diets
looking like I
belonged among hieroglyphics
And, knowing my luck,
probably wearing
the wrong type of underwear
And yet, every year,
even when the windows are being replaced,
the walls taken down,
and they are saran-wrapped within an inch of their lives
to keep them from sawdust
The crimson roses
by the chimney bloom
Beneath the vines
Beneath the shade of the Japanese maple
Beneath the blue
Ah, I think, looking out from
the kitchen one morning
where mourning doves peck
on the lawn like ghosts
How stupid of me
with my heart set on hills
To think that color ever
came from one thing
