NaPoWriMo: Day Two

I wrote the The Set-Up as rebuttal to the myth of the "Super-Crip" the idea that people with disabilities are brave, inspirational, child-like figures who are ultimately super human and therefore not human. I've been feeling really personally fucking offended (TM) by this stereotype lately but The Set Up isn't so much angry as it as sad. Well, it tries to be angry. You'll see. It is very frank.

The Set-Up

So, tonight I'm having all these

stupid thoughts of how much I want an attic apartment
with birch butcher block counters
and maple cabinets painted white
a deep little sink with a black
backsplash

and two long white shelves with everything (everything!) I need

and a double bed
and a reading corner
and reclaimed wood floors
and a vegetarian diet
maybe a little fish

if I lived humbly like this
and taught children honestly

might I be forgiven enough to walk again?

Because I didn't want much then,
and I want even less now

and I will get down on my
knees believe you me

if it means I don't have to use a wheelchair before I've fallen in love.

you know, spare me from being the set-up to the joke...

so a black, bisexual, liberal, vegetarian, hipster, Christian woman
in a wheelchair
walks into a bar,

says she'll have a Shirley Temple because alcohol doesn't agree with her medication.

I can see the reality before it actually happens, the way I used to be able to see
myself getting a job as I went in for the interview. I know why it's offensive to say

wheelchair0bound. I know what you shouldn't say, what you shouldn't do. I give 15% of my disability check to Haiti, to aids-orphaned children in South Africa, to hungry children here in America.

But all I want is a 40,000 a year job, a one bedroom in Oak Park and to bang that professor I never got a chance to in grad school.