Written and Performed for Disrupt Disability Arts Festival, March 2025
Performance Poem with accompanying wheelchair dance movement
I never knew how much I needed you
Or how much you were missing from my life
Serving you has strengthened me
Broken Me
Remoulded Me
Forged Me in the Flames of Collective Resistance
The Greatest Gift You Gave Me
Was to Take My Anger
And Amplify It
Until it Was No Longer Mine Alone
But Yours
The Rage and Frustration
That in Isolation Had Calcified into Despair
Melted Molten Amber
In the Golden Flame
Of Collective Resistance
That So Many Have Tended Before Us
That Lights the Way to Hope
And now barriers are a cause to riot
Even a cause for joy
When we charge through them together
Thank you for lifting me up
Thank you for bringing me down
I will continue to fight for you whether you love me or hate me for it
Dear Disabled Community
I believe in you
I am captivated by your beauty and spirit still
I wish you could see in yourself the bravery and beauty I see you in you
Nurture Each Other in the Holy Womb of Our Difference
May you Rise
May you Keep Disrupting the Narratives That Bind and Destroy Us
And all the tears that we have wept alone come together
To Drown Our Enemies
Poverty, Cruelty, Exclusion
May you continue to grow into
A Rising Tide That Decimates All Barriers in Your Wake
Disabled People of Ireland Take Your Place
As Keepers of the Flame
That So Many Have Tended Before Us
For Right Now We Have A War to Wage
But I wish
I wish
I wish
That one day
We won’t have to fight
So hard
I wish that one day we can take off the armour we had to don
Rest our weary limbs
When the tide calms
And we can swim together in a turquoise sea
And Dance
Because we are Free