Still Life with Disability
Shadow gives likeness possibility
beyond a body’s boundaries.
These days I live inanimate
as a tapered candle spilling
wax to harden on the table,
flowers already vase wilting.
Here is a porous lemon
bitter as any reality.
Here is where the vision couldn’t
match the talent. Be careful
to arrange each lonely object
for best display upon the shroud.
Abecedarian for Invisible Disability
Already I have vanished, a specter
believed only when she wails.
Certainty is reserved for bodies who never
dare to fail, the familiar flesh and bone.
Enough I want to shout at my own
face in the mirror but there is only emptiness.
Ghosts are the myth no one believes like
hurts no one sees, even medical
imaging leaving me transparent as a lie.
Joking, I say I am fine. I pretend to
know how I will go on
living this way, the pain of a world
molded for everyone’s comfort but my own.
No one minds if any but the haunted
open their throats to complain yet
proving my reality is impossible to some.
Quiet is a cure, I’ve learned, over the years
rattling the chains of my body,
silence an antidote to spirits.
Trust me, I want to say, I am
uncompromised as any life allows.
Violation can happen to anybody
who insists themselves immortal.
X-rays cannot locate the source of pain,
yellowed as this old sheet, the shrouded
zero of a life no one will believe.
Sarah Fawn Montgomery is the author of Abbreviate, Halfway from Home, Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir, three poetry chapbooks, and the craft text Nerve: Unlearning Workshop Ableism to Develop Your Disabled Writing Practice. She is an Associate Professor at Bridgewater State University.