I feel the coming and going of my capacities and resources. I am intermittence. I would like to be more at ease with this and trust to the natural process and rhythm of the tidal bits of me. I want to trust to my self-understanding and attunement. I want to – but there is this voice that comes with/to me at these times, and though I try to set my sail to not be caught up in that wind, I am drawn in by its siren song.  The well-worn tune plays and re-plays singing me to the rocky shore to crash upon the rocks of that which I fear I cannot do: I am clearly not enough.

In these times I am two…

Bisected by ableism…

I was writing about this recently – and about how I still am learning that this ebb and flow is natural for me. My way of being is not broken and I can reject the ableist messages that I have internalized around this. Though, I’ll admit I find that easier to say and to write about than to actually do…

I am intermittence
The coming and going
Of focus and attention
Of movement
Of pain
I am dichotomy

I am two
bisected by ableism
Where I live
Silently

Secretly
In stops and starts
Where the sticky glue of passing privilege
Creates the illusion of continuity
Hides the inconsistency

I am riding the wave
With unpredictable bursts of doing and not
It is the undoing of me

I am undone
Unfinished
A work in progress
Another incomplete project
Transient

I am intermittence
And this is a beautiful thing

Leah Kelley,
March 2017

Image: Photo of sky and mountains and rising moon in tones of blue with a silhouette of overhanging branches in the right foreground. A pencil sketched boat (based on a drawing by Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are”) is sailing across the mountains. A frizzy-headed person wearing a wolf suit is in the boat. Text on the boat reads “Whose story is this anyway…” and “LEAH”. Text of the poem “I am Intermittence” (above) is overlaid in white font.

_______________________________________________________