I remember the day my body began to scream
And my words, my sounds began to change
I searched for his lips in the void
Something yellow. Something blue. Something green
The whole spectrum, my rainbow, my life
Began to change
Muting into grays and murky echoes.
I remember so much as I take out my headphones
Legs ceasing to strut across the dance floor at Sidetrack because I caught your eye in those thick, black-framed glasses and crisp white shirt, shooting red hot desire from my hypothalamus to the tips of my toes on a thumping beat, dancing down the delicious healthy myelin I did not yet name until I needed to know the name.
Did I ever strut?
I damn well hope I did.
I run my hands down my thighs, thumping my fist, waiting, waiting, waiting for a muscle to jump, waiting for a signal to thump its way down to my toes, my calves, my thighs, where joy used to live.
And a mouth where words came easily like breath. “Hello. I am Jonathan.”
But that was before my fingers became my voice, tap tap tapping the letters that used to be the words that used to be colors that used to be the sounds that burst forth from my throat.
My voice
I dare not type the colors I used to feel because then you would see my heart
I beg God, silently, not my voice, not my language.
I sit here
24 miles and a world away
Buzzing reminders linger so red hot you wouldn’t dare touch
electric blue slicing through the myelin, I now know the name for
traveling my nerves like a jackrabbit, shivering to the electronic beat of sweat and Chicago midnight secrets ringing in my ears
My voice rising rising rising to ecstatic Heaven above the buzz of your touch so slight I question if it ever really happened, as we dance
I still feel all of that. I still feel a lifetime of how to feel
So I wait a little longer.
Gently, I lower myself from my wheelchair to the grass, touching one finger to the earth and one to heaven
I sit in the grass, legs splayed in front of me. They are quiet.
I watch my ducks, my geese, my squirrels rising to greet the morning
Chicago is waking without me. Without my myelin. Without feeling except for pain that the Morphine will dull, but not until I’ve had my morning sun, for gray will come soon enough when the red is too hot to handle, and I whisper, “God help me.”
I feel these two worlds crashing apart with my pen. I’m forgetting how things feel. Walking. Talking. I know my primary colors to paint the picture of who I briefly was.
I have the pen, so I’ll write it: I strutted like a damned golden star shining a hole through the moon.
I was fabulous. I just never knew it.
I will paint 1000 versions of these two lives that these legs traveled in cities not mine to keep
My body not mine to keep
The vibration not mine to keep.
A squirrel chirps.
I close my eyes
I lean into the pond and dip my finger
I touch my forehead: The Father
My belly: The Son
Right shoulder: The Holy Spirit
Left shoulder: Amen.
I want more. Please let me have more. Oh God, this can’t be everything at 35? Can it? I’m not done yet. Please. I want more. I’ll do better. I’ll do it right. Please. Please.
Is it too late for prayers?
I don’t know how to write the ending to this because this is not how life ends at a pond just outside Chicago.
My ducks, my geese slicing the water,
at peace with the quiet of their pond
unaware of the electric buzz outside this place of quiet
How much longer can I wait?
For something
Anything.
This world, this body, are only borrowed
for a moment in my pen that holds two worlds.
My memories, my peace to keep.
I begin to breathe in, out, in, out, in, out
Until I feel a touch of blue.
I open my mouth and say, “ahhh.”
I hear my voice.
I see a flash of yellow.
I feel something. Something. Something.
Jonathan Michael Saucedo (he/him) is a Chicago-based disabled writer, actor, and educator whose work explores chronic illness, disability, and LGBTQ+ love through prose, poetry, and performance. His writing appears in The Orange Rose Literary Magazine and Dreamers Creative Writing, with work performed with Echo Theatre Collective’s Reverb Ensemble; his piece “How a Soul Leaves” is forthcoming in The Orange Rose. He holds an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University and a BA in Theater and Secondary Education from Loyola University Chicago.
Substack: substack.com/@jonathanmichaelsaucedo
Instagram: @saucedowrites
Website: jonathanmichaelsaucedo.com