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Poetry • by Aimee Louw
PLAY AUDIO VERSION: voice of Aimee Louw
Less sweet than chocolate or concrete
One time I edited a friend’s paper and found out that there was a language for the deep and mostly hidden and emerging - whether I liked it or not - struggle between conforming and outlying
Assimilating and being
A language and body of work that accepted and
valued what I think I had been conditioned to hide
Be ashamed of
It was a time shortly after my period of going to Second Cup (for wifi) looking up pictures of Sunaura Taylor paintings of herself as a
Chicken
Red fox
And looking up other paintings, the napoleonic clubfoot soldier, the --- wait, was that the only one?
This was a time of ravenous hunting
I found a website of support network with conflictingly Christian undertones
Overcoming undertones
Cure-based overtones
Curved out little toes
I edited that paper and I met that friend’s supervisor in the Place des Arts metro
We staged a practical joke protest
Where’s the elevator, we asked passers-by
only to have them realize il y’en a pas!1
How funny
She was the one who carried my friend’s portable ramp
Or had I met her before? There’s lots of things left out of this
story. Memories are
Convenient techniques curation
Curvation is called contracture
That portable ramp lived in my closet for years
I got the idea to do a Masters with her.
I wanted to go deeper into the question of
Complicity
Settler activists advocating equal access on unceded land
My new then partner told me about prêts et bourses.
I cried when I found out
The government would pay my tuition and some living costs.
A year into my Masters my partner got a postdoc in Vancouver
I was ready to escape the community commitments I had built myself within; a mould
less sweet than chocolate
Or concrete
Mine had become
A story of running
Away
Every time someone pissed me off
Everytime someone fucked off away from my personal code; my expectations. It happens quickly, practically instantly. You're
A friend, all good
And then
You did this
I'm out. And
I'm out and
I'm out. It happened
Slowly, quietly - I'm there
I'm there and then
I'm out.
Not thinking about visibility or
Representation
Or
The table or
A seat at it; I usually bring my own seat anyways
But dismissal, a strategy
Is not something worthy of a roundtable or
Panel or
Speaker's fee. It comes free2
I wanted to go deeper into the question of
Complicity
We left Montreal for Vancouver and
I took it almost as far as it would go
Wheels
Freedom after
Weeks of
Counted steps
Rationed steps
Rationalized bets
Gambling on minutes out and minutes back
Minutes, days,
Getting places in old, tired ways
Take it to one bar
Fully charged
Wheels
Freedom;
After cursing her boxiness and the way she separates me from the air I move through
Again, thankful for her constance3 when everything I pass by and place myself within, is
changing
I took her and allowed her to carry me
As far as I wanted to go: no further no shorter
A bridge
An oceanside park
Another one
Another one
Pass by the pool
The bus
I snubbed benches as she held me
in her supportive nest
her hands on my back, wrapped around
upper
thighs and ass
Today, not scanning ledges,
steps,
concrete separators between
bike path and
walking area,
for a place to rest, hoping to be held by unknown or familiar surfaces,
my wheels and I went far. No further no shorter
As she shouldered the burden of objects:
wine,
hair dye,
two
types
of tofu,
she did not complain
Her constance is my freedom4
(Then as) today
She
Carried me
–•–
1 French for: There aren’t any!
2 This poem is called Speakers Fee
3 Constance Lethbridge is the name of the rehab centre in Montreal where I got my wheelchair.
4 This poem is called Wheelchair Love Ballad.
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[Distillate © HA&L + Aimee Louw | {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]
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