These poems are published as part of the Amplifying Disabled Voices special section, selected by editors Christopher Heuer, Marlena Chertock, and Gregory Luce.
What Do You Offer?
An unseen force lingers at the horizon,
holding its silence like a blood oath,
written into the hollows of our hearts,
older than their questions, older than them.
They ask me what I do,
as if my worth is something to be weighed,
pressed between their fingers like a coin,
held to the light to see if I am real.
Their smiles stiffen at my answer,
a withering bouquet laid on the grave of their interest.
They do not say it,
but the words bloom in their silences,
black mold behind the wallpaper,
a sickness in the walls.
Lazy.
Burden.
Waste of air.
The state casts its shadow,
offering me a door that only locks from the outside.
A dignified death, a merciful vanishing.
The papers call it kindness.
The doctors call it relief.
As if breath is borrowed,
and those who cannot labour must pay it back in full.
A flicker on a screen.
A whisper in a clinic.
They have always been good at sorting.
Skin color.
Chromosomes.
The shape of a skull.
The slowness of a step.
The blade has never changed.
Only the names on the list.
They speak in soft voices,
say it is best, it is kind,
but I hear what they do not say—
Some weeds should never be watered.
They do not know—
or perhaps they do, but look away—
that their body, too, is a waning thing.
Their hands will one day quiver.
Their voices will falter,
spines will curl,
the machine will spit them out,
brittle-boned,
useless to the empire they built.
One day, the world will turn to them and ask—
What do you do?
What do you offer?
And the silence will taste like rust.
And above them, steady as the turning earth,
He stirs.
Watching.
Waiting.
He does not forget.
Long before they built their altars to power and profit,
before they learned to hate what they could not use,
His hands shaped the helpless from the dust
and called them good.
They will be ash.
He will remain.
And so will His love—for both me and you.
In Sickness and in Health
I cannot be the kind of wife
they whisper about in grocery aisles—
aproned and effortless, kneading dough with delicate hands.
Never soft-lipped, never silk-wrapped,
never the kind to make life easy.
I move like a storm you never tried to outrun,
break like the tide and pull you under,
and still, you never ask me to be less.
And still—
when my bones ache like wind-beaten branches,
when pain presses into me like a second skin,
you gather me up, weightless in your arms,
carry me through the hush of evening,
like something fragile, lovely—
a petal you refuse to let fall.
When my mind circles the same thought until it frays,
when my body betrays me in ways I cannot name,
when weariness burrows in like an unshakable chill,
you listen—you lean in,
as if every syllable is a secret,
as if I am the most fascinating story ever told.
When exhaustion wrings me dry,
leaves me trembling,
you press your lips to my forehead,
whisper my name,
stay beside me in the dark
until the worst has passed.
And when I am sharp,
when the ache of existing turns me cold,
when I am distant—lost in the fog my body makes—
you are patient, steady.
You know I will come back,
and you wait for me like you always do.
I wish I could be more for you,
the kind of wife who rises early,
who cooks, who cleans,
who makes life feel easy.
But in the quiet, when I curl into you,
when my fingers trace little hearts into your skin,
repeating the shape like a ritual,
a rhythm I can hold onto,
when I give you all that I am—
you remind me:
You, my love, were never looking for easy.
You were looking for me.
Tessa Augustyniak is a Canadian poet whose work blends raw lyricism with haunting imagery to explore faith, survival, and the quiet resilience of the unseen. Her work unapologetically rebukes ableist narratives, giving voice to those the world too often dismisses. Through poetry and unshakeable faith, she transforms struggle into something fierce: an assertion that even in suffering, there is meaning, beauty, and resilience. Her words are both a revolt and a revelation, a voice crying out against the lie that only the strong deserve to survive.
Featured image in this post is, “Wedding vow P1070616” By RF Vila – licensed creative commons via Wikimedia Commons.
Tony Medina, Associate Chair and Director of Creative Writing in the Department of Literature & Writing at Howard University, is a multi-genre author and editor of 24 books for adults and young people. His most recent poetry collection, Because the Sky (Sable Books, 2024), is an homage to the Palestinian people. His work appears in over one 160 publications. Among his honors, he is the recipient of the first African Voices Literary Award (2013) and the 2025 National Black Writers Nikki Giovanni Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Literature.
