Flights of stairs no longer launch flights of my imagination. Ten years ago these obstructions awakened our voices, drew us forward into battle, forged our unity. In Nairobi we gathered, one by one, from our villages, cities, homes, farms, schools, nations. Women with disabilities, separated from our sisters by walls and risers, found our own sisterhood. But that was ten years ago.
Stairs are no longer poetic.
Barriers drain strength from our arms and hearts, animate neither verse nor dance. We are tired of the fight. Banishment still sets our anger in motion but no longer makes us sing. I breathe in a chaos of odors, scarcely filtered, a noxious bouquet. Throat muscles tense, push short breaths through drying tissue, sounds barely strong enough to pass the blue paper masking my nose and mouth.