Editor’s Note: This poem was first published by Words With Weight.
Disabled
is not a dirty word
that turns your pure hands
unclean.
It does not
poison your
drinking water.
It does not
infect
your able body.
It does not
infest
your ‘normal’ mind.
You prefer to
sanitise
your language,
because you don’t
want to muck up
by saying the dreaded word:
‘disabled’.
Yet that’s exactly what I am.
In your mind, I am disease-dripped,
a taboo, to be hidden away,
shunned
From the rest of the world.
How dare I claim
to be disabled,
like those lazy layabouts
who don’t even try to take off.
How dare the unwinged bird
invent its own wings so that it can
fly.
You just want to see it fall,
and weep at its death,
calling it an ‘inspiration’ at its funeral.
Leave the flowers in the fields.
Leave the dying to yourselves,
the normal freaks,
not to the beautiful birds
and the flowers you wish
to poison with your sympathy
that we never wanted.
My life
is not a tragedy
to be wept at.
I
am not a comedy
to be laughed at.
I am a disabled person.
Not differently abled.
Disabled.
My tale is that of an unwinged phoenix.
I go through the fire,
and rise from the ashes,
every single day.
Can a bird with wings do that?
No, I didn’t think so.
I’ll leave my door open
on the way out,
and sing my little heart out
so that other birds born without wings
can sing,
and fly too,
but only if it is their heart’s desire to take flight.
