Content Warnings: descriptions of an IV, ableism, covid denialism, suicidal ideation
“Would you have liked me better if I died? / So you could tell my story the way
it ought to be?”
I don’t know if it’ll be one year or fifty; but I think this world will kill me. The
nurse cannot get a vein. So she punctures my skin with a butterfly needle—the
one they use for kids—again, and again, and again, digging the needle deeper
each time, searching blindly for blood vessels. She fishes the needle
underneath my flesh for too long, until she finally calls it quits. I am drenched
in sweat and covered in bruises. She does not ask me if I’m okay. She won’t
keep her mask on. It’s flu season. I am immunocompromised. I tell her this.
She takes her mask off anyways. They stared at me like I had two heads when
I arrived, mouths agape, thousand yard stares. Why are you in a wheelchair?
Why are you wearing a mask? People like you aren’t supposed to be seen, is
the unspoken message. I am too sick for the public. The ugly laws linger.
After she pulls the needle out and presses cotton into the tiny puncture wound,
I start crying. In all my visits to the infusion clinic, I have never cried. “Are
you okay?” she finally asks. This world is going to kill me, I want to say. I
just want to feel better, I want to say. I cannot afford to get these infusions as
often as I need, so I am getting worse. I am slowly dying. And I just want to
feel better, I want to say. If you get me sick, it might kill me. This is death by a
thousand cuts, I want to say. But I don’t. I just leave. Sometimes I wonder if I
should take my death into my own hands. But I don’t. Though the frigid wind
stings my face, I text my ride not to bother. I don’t want anyone to hear the
tremor in my voice. I take the cold journey home alone.
“If I’d died willing, you’d have taken it nice / If I’d sewn rocks in a dress, gone
with grace into a lake / But since I’m alive, you’ll have to break in as I sleep /
When you find my love beside me / Choke him dead for havin’ me”
When Mitski sings directly to her nameless killer in “Dead Women,” she forces
the viewer to reckon with the nature of their own voyeurism. One of the
constants of the disabled experience is being the target of collective
voyeurism and dehumanization, so this song inspires me to trace the webs
strung by the people who left me for dead; the complacent, and the direct
perpetrators alike, with their spidery fingers and beady eyes; all who find me
palatable only in memoriam. I am only permitted to exist to them in
mythology. And I have to ask: is leaving someone for dead not murder?
“While I dream of flying, stab me twenty-seven times / Ransack the house for
what you’ll auction, what you’ll keep / Then embalm me up ’cause you’re
hosting the viewing / Saying, ‘She gave her life so we could have her in our
dreams’ / ‘She gave her life so we could fuck her as we please’”
Theo Foster (he/him) is a multimedia artist, writer, and community organizer from the midwest on a lifelong mission to learn as many creative skills as possible. He is inspired most by nature, his friends and ancestors, the cripplepunk movement, and the disabled creatives who came before him.
Website: citrinecraft.neocities.org
Instagram: @citrinecrafting