This poem is published as part of the Amplifying Disabled Voices special section, selected by editors Christopher Heuer, Marlena Chertock, and Gregory Luce.
Gentle
I’m gentle with him. He’s fully recovered from his latest surgery and says I don’t need to be so
gentle and I wish I could tell him I’ve had a surgery very similar to his and I wish sometimes that
people were more gentle with me. But his job is to be vulnerable and mine is not. No – his job is
to be whatever he wants to be, whatever he wants me to think he is and mine is to be a very
specific thing for him without even asking and making it seem completely spontaneous.
He’s smaller than me and I do what I can not to bring attention to it. Some men aren’t bothered
by the height difference but I can tell he is and it makes me sad for him. He’s nice, maybe even
too nice and he’s not attractive enough to be anything other than an asshole to me for me to be
even slightly turned on. But I know he won’t be into this arrangement for very long because at
the moment I’m too big and my hair is too short and he is only with me when he is weak and his
money has been spent on medical bills and so I take what I can and so does he.
Abigail Carver is a Florida born, Los Angeles based musician and writer.
Featured image in this post is, “Hand Pinted Kintsugi Pottery Bowl” By Ruthann Hurwitz – licensed creative commons via Wikimedia Commons.
