Strolling (2020-___)

By Jessica Suzanne Stokes

Baby swings covered in caution tape.

Masks as the most common litter.

We wanted to grasp walk and roll in one word so we might describe how we

moved together and for

some time stroll rolled off our tongues and held us both

until its implied leisure no

longer lapped at what provoked our moving.

But we kept moving.

We'd see some deer wander by the river nearest our apartment

and turn the deer into a flicker of a promised otherwise

letting their leisure together at a distance from us

move us to stroll again.

Then, an idea of a person began leaking from me

and perhaps the days of their dripping away

led us to say goodbye to them at the river

just past the baby swings.

There were so many goodbyes then to people we knew as more than ideas

as hospitals ran out of rooms and we didn't know what to do about any of

the swollen grief.

So you walked and I rolled at a distance from leisure, from lovers, from

friends, from together.

For months after, we wandered the subdivision behind our complex

never nearing the river. Eventually, we brought dog and cat treats so each block

we'd meet a friend we earned unfairly. We sought out any company that

might wag and scamper with us.

One day the weather changed enough that we forgot ourselves and

strolled back to the river.

The deer were deer, not stolen friends, not flickers of escape routes, but

animals whose home was threatened by us and by the construction of

some new university building whose purpose we'd yet to determine.

And we started leaking

all the water and food we'd hoarded as we became preppers

without being prepared for any of this

all the masks we'd disposed of before we made and bought some of cloth

all the ideas and people we'd lost

Source: The Ending Hasn't Happened Yet (Sable Books, 2022)

Disability Poetics