Ashley Halliwell“answer”
I could ask my body
what will I do when it has fallen
and regardless of which side I try and
coax, pry, cajole, or beat an answer from –
the deaf side or the silent one,
the answer is always the same:
it already has.
sixteen percent of my brain died before I was
a year old, I fought tooth and nail to keep
my own heart. (I was finally removed from
the transplant list when I was 12)
I’ve had to re-learn how to walk twice,
I spent this past july remembering
how to talk again
after nearly dying for the nineteenth
time. I couldn’t form a coherent sentence for
a month after a seizure episode approximately
twenty five minutes long
I’ve been everything short of shot
and sometimes I wish I had been
just to get the dying over with
because “what doesn’t kill you makes you
stronger” is a goddamn myth
sometimes what doesn’t kill you makes you
wish you were dead
the deaf side of my body and the silent side
are asymmetrical, imperfect mirrors of each other
an invisible remnant of the stroke in ‘98
I can feel the right side but it doesn’t often
tell me anything anymore because where it should’ve been able to talk my mother screamed
over it and told me I was faking my pain
and my sadness, my fear, that I was just
looking for attention, and it was beaten into
listening to her instead (she had a knack for
going for the face)
it took 24 years to fully break free and by that time
my mind had shattered as well
so, what will I do now that my body has fallen?
same thing I’ve done since I was a child.
rest, get up, do the damn thing again
and try to listen for better whispers
-Allēna 10/27/2025
#ActuallyADHD #actuallyAuDHD #ActuallyAutistic #mayswenson #medicalDiary #milwaukee #poetry #responsepoem #seizure #stroke #tbi
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