I learned early to be useful

To fold up my needs and my humanity

Until the amount of bother I was to other people

Was equal to or less than the sum of my assigned merit

Always balancing the weight of vaguely including me

Against the value that the ‘normal’ person held

With no weird episodes or wonky knees

It didn’t matter that my folding-up

Creased and curled my spirit

And forbade me soaring joy

Alive was worth the damage

When you are seven years old

You do not want to know the feeling

Of discovering how cheaply your life is held

**

As we mourn the disabled lives lost to caregiver and family-member violence

May we attend to the lives of those we don't yet understand

May we embrace a greater sense of what it means to be worthy

May we begin to unfurl our own long-folded-up selves

To co-create a world of greater love and justice

Blessed be