Practice I settle into a chair named forgiveness— for observation the best seat in the house. Multitudes pass before me—faces ringing as gusts blur the flowers, drawing their fragrances out. Soon my table is crowded— my challenge now to absorb detail of iris and mouth as family and strangers lean in without getting up to walk out. As I laugh with new friends’ fortunes or painfully cradle their woes but turn and send away others because behaviors are boundaries proposed, my own comfort in its commodious arms and cushioned seat—its lumbar support bolstering me— costively grows. Some come hoping to catch a reflected vision, to hear an unsinkable tongue, or to visit an unruffled aspect— to provoke or perhaps to learn how it’s done. But no tricks exist to tell them. My derrière steers the way, still in its spot, imprinting the harsh weight of my person; the work of the sit bones is hard.
Deborah J. Shore has spent most of her life housebound or bedridden with sudden onset severe ME/CFS. This neuroimmune illness has made engagement with and composition of literature costly and, during long seasons, impossible. She has won poetry competitions at the Anglican Theological Review and the Alsop Review. Her most recent or forthcoming publications include THINK, Thimble Lit, Ekstasis, Reformed Journal, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Christian Century, Relief Journal, and the Sejong Cultural Society.
Amethyst Review 