My nurse tells me to let her know when I feel strange.
Christ, when don’t I feel strange?
My cells vomit off me like rats abandoning a ship.
Doesn’t she see them?
At first, she said she saw nothing,
but then she confessed yes.
If this experiment works, I’ll be able to walk again.
It was taken away from me, and I want it back!
Friends shake their heads behind me.
Why can’t I be reasonable and accept reality?
They’re lying.
The answer is deep in their own souls if they bother to look.
My brain explodes, and my body shakes out of its skin.

John Masterson (he/him) was born with cerebral palsy. He graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit with a BA in English. He has published poetry in Kingfisher Journal, Cold Moon Journal, horror senryu journal, folk ku journal, Tranquility: An Anthology of Haiku Haiku, Wordgathering, and Magnets and Ladders. He was nominated for a 2022 Best of the Net Award for his prose poem “Little Wheels” in Spoonie Journal. He attends the Ability Write Now writers’ workshop for writers with disabilities at Ability Now Bay Area in Oakland. He lives in Hayward, California.