Spoon Tattoo

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts found that nearly ninety-six percent of chronic medical conditions can be considered “invisible illnesses.” Poet Amba Elieff details her own experiences with chronic illness via one small tattoo. Read Spoon Tattoo here.

Notes From A 10 a.m. Appointment

In which our protagonist enters the Zoom room for a psych evaluation, eager and nervous to uncover the next phase of her healing journey. Poet and author Clara Olivo details what happens when nothing goes as planned. Read Notes From A 10 a.m. Appointment here.

Searching for Bunker Norms

It’s the end of the world. Then again, we Spoonies have always been able to adapt. While the non-disabled, richest one percent were hidden underground in bunkers during the catastrophe, a network spearheaded by a disabled woman had secretly gathered to protect the most disregarded of the population. Read Searching for Bunker Norms here.

Food: A Relationship

In her essay, Knee Brace Press EIC Nicole Zelniker chronicles her relationship with food through the lens of OCD, anorexia, and Crohn’s disease. The essay is an ode to recovery as well as community in the form of “badass, body positive friends.” Read Food: A Relationship here.

Ode to Chronic Illness

“Music is my liberation/the medicine to my soul/the bridge between two realms in which/I coexist.” Poet and author Clara Olivo is back with a poem about music, chronic pain, and resilience. Read Ode to Chronic Illness here.

Staying Sparkly

Does your anxiety stick to you, like glitter or sand? In their new poem, Staying Sparkly, Sojourner “Hughes” Davidson details their relationship with anxiety and how closely it adheres to their skin, however often they try to wash it away. Read Staying Sparkly here.

To Thrive in Darkness

“We were friendly with the dark.” So begins Jamieson Wolf’s To Thrive in Darkness, a short story where the characters live in a fictional labyrinth, but the narrator’s experiences with disability are strikingly similar to Wolf’s own experiences with multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy. Read To Thrive in Darkness here.

Try to Understand

So often, neurodivergent folks have to mask who they are in order to fit in. In her poem Try to Understand, poet and author Clara Olivo touches on how she hid her inner self in order to appear neurotypical, to the point she began to believe it was necessary. Read Try to Understand here.

Summoning Serotonin

Sometimes, all we need is a little help, even if that help comes from an unexpected source. Author Amanda Cessor shares with us a fantastical short story about her very real experiences with ADHD, anxiety, and depression. Read Summoning Serotonin here.

Neurodivergent

At twenty years old, Julián Esteban Torres López wrote Neurodivergent, a piece about how his ADHD, aphantasia, autism, and OCD intersect in his own mind. Torres López is the founder of The Nasiona, a movement and non-profit that advocates for and centers personal stories of historically marginalized voices. Listen to and read Neurodivergent here.

Resection

As a stage IV cancer patient, Pacific Northwestern poet Lara Haynes Freed learned of a new metastasis. Her poem Resection chronicles her experience with her diagnosis. Freed holds an MA in linguistics from the University of Kansas and has been published in multiple literary magazines. Read the poem here.

Ache Awake

Sojourner “Hughes” Davidson’s poem, Ache Awake, deals with the speaker’s chronic pain, migraines, and insomnia. A DMV-based poet writing about the mind and the body, Davidson has previously published two poems in the Guilford College lit mag, The Greenleaf Review. Read the poem here.