the way words can wash
away my disability, my need
for advocacy, activism,
or anything accessible.
I guess I’ll baptize myself
in the spangled Gulf of America
and watch the renamed waves carry off
the barriers and the injustice,
the pollution and the political,
the women and the underrepresented.
I guess I’ll stay under
until I feel something
that isn’t identity,
that isn’t a sense of belonging,
that isn’t person-centered;
until I can step back
on shore as clean and white
as a bandage
wrapped around nothing.
Bethany F. Brengan is a freelance writer and editor with a contradictory love of both cats and birds. She grew up in Kentucky and now lives in the PNW. She writes about books, comics, disability, and writing. She also writes a lot of poetry. Her work has appeared or is upcoming in The Comstock Review, Farmer-ish, Bellevue Literary Review, and Ninth Letter. She can be found at https://medium.com/@bethanybrengan.