2007-02-12 || 11:06 p.m.

|| crisp ||

i have been thinking of you lately because you're the only person i know who regularly uses a wheelchair. it's a terrible reason to think of you; i'm sorry. but i remember thinking it an honor to let me wheel you around fir trees and a campfire, how ridiculous it was to get your wheels stuck between rocks and sticks. you yelled at me for not paying attention. i somehow took it as a sign of affection.

i remember wanting to protect you and how you hated that. too many people took the slowness of your speech for stupidity. the tops of your legs got sunburnt when someone forgot to cover them with sunscreen. you got your period and the blood stained your shorts and collected in your seat before anyone noticed to help you. you didn't want help. it made you angry.

you wanted to be a writer. for a while we wrote letters, and yours were typewritten and so articulate and beautiful. sixteen years later i found a poem you wrote while searching your name on the internet, and i am so proud of you you'd hate it.

my mother uses a wheelchair now. i'm sorry to make the connection. but a few months ago, when she first started using it in public, my dad was pushing her in a restaurant and stopped, not realizing she was facing a wall. she gave him hell, just the way you did with me, and it (i'm sorry) reminded me of you. that look when her face settled after she got the anger out.

my dad told me on the way to the airport last night that he had recently gone with mum to a mattress store and the salesman had asked him if he was taking his mother out for an outing. he said he just said no. it breaks my heart to think of my mother enduring that. and my mother is not the type to cry in front of anybody, but dad said she did. i've never so wanted to kill a mattress salesman. my mother would probably tell me not to waste my energy, but we will never bring the story up and i will continue to pretend not to notice when she looks that way.

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