When you see her,
Don’t look away. Don’t cringe.
Don’t let
That flood of immediate assumptions
Take over and stain your memory of her.
Look past it.
Say hello. She’ll answer.
She’ll smile, and ask about your day.
Look past her appearance-
The skin-and-bone girl
That one in the chair.
Get to know her.
Hear about her brothers and crazy dog
Her borderline obsession with pandas
Her ambition to own a card company
And possibly conquer the world.
Understand that, she never means to take up
Too much space, to smash your toes.
She has bad driving days too.
And realize-
If she could walk,
She would dance. She would act.
She would play softball and run with the cross country team.
But, as it is, she is stuck.
Stuck needing help just to buy her lunch.
To get in the elevator.
She doesn’t need pity and she doesn’t need prejudice
She has plenty already, thank you very much.
She never says much in class because
Of the looks she gets from other students-
The brainless bunch who can’t understand why
And can’t put together the fact that
She probably wouldn’t have a power chair if she weren’t
“With it.”
Honestly, would she have one if they were afraid
of her running into doors all the time?
‘Course not!
She is incredible.
Incredibly tough
Incredibly fragile
Incredibly odd
But Incredibly normal.
She is a person.
Not piece of animated furniture.
She is shy.
She is hyper and out-of-control.
She is Piper
She is Nudge.
She is dreaming- all the time.
She is incredibly lucid and realistic.
She is who she is.