The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: On Becoming a Role Model by Lynne Schmidt

On My Disability

After several minutes
of stalemate silence,
the man who reeks of alcohol,
who causes his wife to flinch when he storms
in before scurrying away,
evaluates my body and asks in disbelief,
“You are disabled? How?”

I want to have him pull up a chair,
light up a cigarette,
open up a beer,
and brace himself for the long haul,
because most of my therapists can’t even stomach it.

In the span of thirteen seconds
I want to crack apart my skull
and allow these memories to float like the Milky Way
from my brain to his.

I want him to see my father,
my mother,
my brother,
my sister running away,
my dog’s blood in the driveway,
the bed of a purple truck,
the first boy to show me around school trapped in a car in flames,
my sister’s best friend in a casket,
my best friend in a casket,
several more friends,
a near-stranger’s bed,
the standoff with the mirror,
the razor blades,
the nights I wake up screaming,
the inability to tell my partner
I love him
because the words form a sock in my throat
that is so thick I can barely breathe through.

Instead,
the hurricane stays inside me
because I want to win a fight
I know his wife will lose.
I bite my teeth together and

narrow my eyes and
straighten up my spine in a way she will never be able to and say,

“Yes. Would you like to see my paperwork?”

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In honor of PTSD Awareness day of June 27, this selection comes from the book, On Becoming a Role Model, available from Thirty West Publishing.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Ada Rivera.