A Time to Dance(16)

            because my family doesn’t have enough insurance.


I feel the American’s eyes on me,

            looking

            as though I’m more than an amputee, a number, a chore.

            He crosses over to me, his strides large, a broad smile on his lips.

            “Veda? Did I say your name right?”

            “Yes, Doctor.”

            “Call me Jim. Please.” His left hand in his pocket,

            he holds his right hand out to me.

            As though we’re equals.

            “Thank you, Doctor—I mean—just Jim,” I say.

            He chuckles. “Haven’t done anything yet.”

            He has.

            No older man ever invited me to shake hands.

            No other adult ever asked me to call them by name.

            He even said “please” although I’m a patient.

            A smile tugs at face muscles I haven’t used for a while.

            My hand slips into his

            as though it remembers his touch

            and we’ve held hands often

            in a previous life.


“Think it over,” he says. “Take as long as you need.”

            I let my fingers stay in his pale palm

            like brown roots sinking into chalky white soil. “I’ll do it.”

            “Good,” Dr. Murali says. “He’ll have you

            walking fine in no time.”


“I don’t want to walk fine.

            I want to dance.”


The American—just-Jim—lets my hand go,

            but his gaze holds me.

            His eyes, blue and bright,

            light a sparkle of hope inside me.





LESS UGLY





I used to dream of handsome men

            whose touch

            made my skin tingle.


In the hospital’s airless exercise room,

            I hurt from deep in my ribs to the surface of my skin

            when handsome Jim lifts me out of the wheelchair,

            helps me hold on to parallel bars

to do the simplest of movements—

            bending and straightening,

            moving what’s left of my legs.


“You’re doing great, kiddo,” he says.

            I don’t feel great.

            My shameful croaks of pain

            grate on my ears, harsh as a frog’s.

            But when Jim says “great,”

            rolling the r’s around like melting sweets

in his American mouth,

            when he calls my lopped-off leg a “residual limb,”

            when he says I’m “differently abled,”

            not handicapped, not disabled,

            when he’s nearby, using his kinder words,

            he makes me feel