“No-Distance Friendship” by Leanne Charette
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets' daily poetry dispatch. Read "No-Distance Friendship" by Leanne Charette.
No-Distance Friendship
By Leanne Charette
Dedicated to Tea Gerbeza
I’ve never seen your face
unframed by my laptop screen
yet you’re closer than the view from my window
your laugh filling headphones with music
and when the store three doors down is too far
to reach on worn wheelchair tires or aching spines
we travel across country instead
the map with all its arbitrary lines
accordion-folds until Grand River flows into Prairie
your corgis coiled beneath my chair
my children dishevel your living room.
What is distance when one step one revolution
of a wheel feels like a thousand?
Borderlines between us crinkle into crow’s feet
kilometers blurred by tears from our laughing eyes.
You ask how can I support you today
as if it was nothing to rearrange the world
Copyright © Leanne Charette
Previously published in Sick Stories.
Leanne Charette (she/her) has cerebral palsy and writes from her experience as a disabled adoptee and mother. Her work has been published by CV2, Eavesdrop, PRISM International, and more, and is forthcoming in The Fiddlehead. She lives on the Haldimand Tract in so-called Kitchener, Ontario with her husband and twin sons.
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