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brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
brokenwingpoet
@brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
140 followers 160 following 38 posts
Poet. Writing on disability & eco justice. Bedbound with Long COVID and Severe ME. 🍉 🇵🇸 🌲 🐦 😷
WILDNESS UNAFRAID, Kelsay Books (2026).
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brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
A poem for a season that better matches my mood and life.

#LongCovid #mecfs #pwme
Welcome Autumn Birdless skies become but another ceiling just painted blue, or mostly gray, come autumn. The change of seasons noticed by the shift in pitch of darkness. Fall gives an excuse to do what I always do, sit with a blanket in bed, hoping this will not be forever, but this time with a softness that holds me, that follows this restful time of year, the kind of softness I yearn for in summer but rarely find in its unrelenting bright, hot days.
September 29, 2025 at 8:25 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
Today is Severe ME Day. A poem imagining a world free of the ableism that compounds the trauma of this dreaded illness.

#SevereMEday #pwME #MECFS #SevereME
#ableism #bedbound
Like a Fallen Feather What if the ableism heaped higher the sicker we become, figments of a poisoned imagination suffocating our own, this anchor of shame not ours to carry, what if – for even just this moment – we released it completely? What if we could hold the disabled parts of ourselves in our own two hands the way one holds a fallen feather? Its soft, delicate lightness born on this wing to rise or when wounded to rest in the warm shelter of the nest as long as need be, dreaming of the demise of a culture that wishes, quickens our own, reborn as a community of care, where pain is seen and tended, not hidden and held alone, where the body is not a tool but a keeper of wisdom not meant to die untold, unheard.
August 8, 2025 at 5:05 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
A poem about the simplicity of life that I miss.

#longcovid #mecfs #severeme #bedbound #millionsmissing #grief #covidisnotover #loss #chronicillness #chronicillnesscommunity #poetry #poetrycommunity
[ID: Calculating I’m so tired of calculating. Whether I can walk across a room or to the doorway to smell fresh air for the first time in days, to feel summer on my face. Whether I can listen to five minutes of an audiobook without drowning in malaise. I’m so tired of calculating every thought. Should I even be writing a poem right now? Shouldn’t I be resting in silent darkness? I spend most of my ever-drained battery on medical appointments, fighting insurance companies, trialing new drugs and riding waves of side effects. I’m so tired of calculating just to ration for small, fleeting moments, moments that sometimes resemble joy. Like the butterfly dancing with wind out my window, or the finch singing unseen in a nearby tree. I’m so tired of calculating. I miss the luxury of living.]
July 31, 2025 at 4:29 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
The genocide and forced starvation in Gaza is indefensible. It’s ethnic cleansing in plain view.

#freepalestine #endthegenocide

@bobbylefebre.bsky.social
Israel is starving Gaza. Line is repeated over and over again on an off white colored background, in typewriter font.
July 26, 2025 at 12:57 AM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
Long COVID anniversary on our anniversary. A day of grief with shadows of joy. The impossible lives disabled people are expected to live.

#LongCOVID #MECFS
#severeME #beebound
#poetry #grief
[ID: What If What if the happiest day of your life melted, dissolved backwards in time to become the day from which you may never recover? What if the moment that was yours became a kettle left on the burner too long, too hot for memory to touch? What if we lived in a world where disabilities were honored before doubted? Where those most sick were protected by those closest to them? Instead, I lie in bed, think the same thought that has no beginning nor end. Just a breath I took one day I’ll never know which one. Just a breath I took one day given to me by someone.]
July 8, 2025 at 9:10 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
New poem in Bed Zine. The loss of meaningful connection to nature is amongst the cruelest parts of this illness.

#LongCovid #MECFS
#Bedbound #SevereME
[ID: A poem titled “Severed” Severed Exiled by a living death disease, to a bed where trees go unseen, waves of wind unfelt, birdsong unheard. Even silence rings in my ears like howling grief echoes in this cave so dark I mistake its walls for skin.]
July 2, 2025 at 7:19 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
I’m excited to announce my debut poetry collection, “Wildness Unafraid,” has been accepted for publication! I’ll post more details as the release date gets closer.

#poetry #ecopoetry
#poetrycommunity
#ecojustice
June 8, 2025 at 6:08 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
On this M.E. Awareness Day, too tired to type more than these words.

#mecfs #pwme #millionsmissing
#meawarenessday
#mecfsawareness
ID: Poem titled “M.E. Awareness Day” The living death disease saps all life but keeps you living, wanting, longing for the life that was but is no more, yearning at least for a life, for a life that feels like you’re alive again, like there is something beyond this boundless sea and its wave after wave of suffering.
May 12, 2025 at 7:36 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
A new poem in @hootreview about the constant, unwinding grief and loss of being indefinitely ill during a pandemic so few still observe.

#LongCovid #chronicillness #grief
#mecfs #pwme
[ID: A poem titled “Unhurried” Grieve as the snail slides unhurried yet everywhere they must reach they find. Grieve as the snail glides unbothered by expectations of time their pace as protective as their shell.
May 10, 2025 at 8:58 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
A poem about surviving this torturous illness — by protecting dreams, finding our voice, and maintaining whatever connection we can to the outer world.

#LongCovid #pwME
#MECFS #SevereME
#disability #poem #poetry
How Sparrows Sing Even bedbound and splintered I know I can’t stay hidden forever. I have little choice even if unseen must find again my voice and remember remember how sparrows sing through coldest heart of winter as we dream through darkest hours of night.
April 8, 2025 at 10:09 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
The air we’re forced to share, poisoned by privilege.

#LongCovid #MECFS
#pwME #SevereME
#ableism #millionsmissing
#Covidisntover
ID: A poem titled “poisoned” Disabled. You can say it. Not a poison word. But we do live in ableds’ poisoned world.
April 5, 2025 at 6:44 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
A poem appearing in the Tiger Moth Review, about a heron I came to know before becoming bedbound, about our tenuous relationship to disability and the more than human world.

#poetry #naturepoetry
#ecopoetry #disability
#ecojustice #heron
[ID: A poem titled, Broken-Winged Heron At a small, wooded pond near where I live dwells a broken-winged heron. He does not exist to inspire wonder, though wonder he inspires. He possesses only himself, not pushing parts away to be whole or belong to something larger, for only one species insists disability must be fixed or assigned perpetual shame. No, the heron does not write dreams in the night of his wing mended but of the hunt that feeds him, comforts of nest that hold him, dangers he must ever know that breathe him into being. Encased in these walls, I still dream of that heron, still hope we meet again someday, must believe the beautiful creature is still alive, as well as one can be amidst unsettling times.]
March 29, 2025 at 7:54 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
As Israel and the US break the ceasefire yet again, a poem of mine that appeared in “Songs of Revolution.” The poem is sadly as relevant now as when it was written - at the beginning of this endless genocide.

#freepalestine #armsembargo #landback
#endapartheid
#permanentceasefirenow
A book titled “Songs of Revolution” with a picture of a watermelon sliced open lying on a plate. Bombed Away on Our Dime by TIM MURPHY So many casually cheering for a genocide, so many others floating in a sea of their own silence, apathy that drowns another's humanity, their right to live, makes anything, everything the war machine wants socially acceptable, even rewarded. Like we learned in school just manifest our destiny, the end. The end, no matter the means. Thousands of endings written from beginnings, no middle, no joyful last moments of innocence lost on their own terms, no chance at a life beyond their youth bombed away on our dime.
March 19, 2025 at 10:40 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
On Long COVID Awareness Day, a poem reflecting on the limits of awareness alone when not coupled with care.

#LongCovid #LongCovidAwarenessDay #pwME #MECFS
#ableism #disability
A poem titled “Long COVID Awareness Day” When your world shrinks to this size, most days feel less than alive, and you’re forced to wonder, who is really not aware of this disease, and who simply doesn’t care?
March 15, 2025 at 5:03 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
As our government scrubs #LongCOVID from collective memory, a poem about what is happening to us.

#pwME #MECFS
#ableism #disabilityjustice
#millionsmissing #poetry
#poem #pandemic
A poem titled, Into Cement Disabled people didn’t cement their own demise. We were trampled just as we tried to stand, stuck as it dried pavement to skin, flattened by the stampede back to the normal, killing us all along.
March 12, 2025 at 8:18 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
A mourning poem for the 5 year anniversary. For all the avoidable deaths and the countless lives that, like mine, avoidably, were made to disappear in the dark.

#LongCovid #MECFS
#pwME #SevereME
#pandemic #ableism
#eugenics #CDCkills
ID: A poem titled “Endless’” Long Covid, what you call a disease when all you know is it may never end like this pandemic, like this pandemic we rendered endless by declaring over too soon.
March 10, 2025 at 10:38 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
Long COVID Awareness Month. Year 5 of the pandemic. A poem about the casual eugenics that, with each passing day, become more and more socially acceptable.

#LongCovid #millionsmissing
#MECFS #pwME
#disabilityjustice
#ableism #eugenics
#nothingaboutuswithoutus
ID: How a Virus Killed So Many People The truth we swallow without tasting bitterness is that most people don’t care if others die – too preoccupied with survival or themselves – they’ve grown numb to it, only care who died and how. And if the killer is not one with whom we wage war, not even one we can see, it can be said to not exist at all, no matter how many people it makes disappear.
March 10, 2025 at 12:04 AM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
One of those days. A poem recently published in Serotonin Press.

#LongCOVID #MECFS
#pwME #PEM #poetry #Bedbound #grief
#LongCOVIDAwareness
A poem titled “Beyond Reach of Tears Sometimes I just want to cry. And sometimes I just do. But so often, mere tears falling are the first rains of the coming storm, of the crash triggered by the slightest exertion, even grieving the life that was but is no more, the one I can only touch in dreams or memory, proves a costly misstep. One of the few constants – the tortuous nature of this illness can never be underestimated. So today, I draw my curtains early, place myself beyond the reach of tears, breathe as gently as I can, and prey to no one in particular that it won’t be like this forever.
March 4, 2025 at 11:55 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
A poem in the latest issue of Kaleidoscope, contemplating the way this illness forever changes you.

#LongCovid #MECFS #pwME #poetry #chronicillness
Poem titled, “Puddle Left by the Storm” If I can do this, so can you. But neither of us should have to. If you can survive this disease, you can live through anything. But survive to what end? For if someday you walk free from the grip of its symptoms, as you glimpse a reflection in the puddle left by this storm: who would you see?
February 28, 2025 at 5:25 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
A poem about how certain illnesses are viewed. About the pain of watching as people see us bedbound yet refuse to see the illness that renders us in this state to begin with.

#LongCovid #pwME
#MECFS #Ableism
#DisabilityJustice
#MillionsMissing
A poem titled “In Plain Sight” In Plain Sight Maybe there’s no distinction between visible and invisible illnesses. Maybe we simply choose which ones to see. Like how we avert our gaze from millions sick with a virus we cannot see but know follows us, spready so casually one could almost mistake all of this carnage as inevitable.
February 24, 2025 at 10:53 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
Another crash within a crash. A poem to try see the way through.

#LongCovid #pwME
#MECFS #ChronicIllness
#poetry #bedbound
#PEM #millionsmissing
A poem titled, “Harvest” Harvest I don’t know if I shall emerge but hold close these words: rest your harvest stillness your friend what if this is a beginning not just an end?
February 23, 2025 at 8:15 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
A poem on #ableism and how the left abandoned disabled people w/Long COVID.

#LongCovid #pwME
#MECFS #ableismistrash
#isolation #grief #poetry
February 21, 2025 at 9:58 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
A bedbound poem on isolation and our frayed connection to the outer world that reminds us — we will always belong.

#LongCovid #MECFS #pwME #chronicillness
#poem #poetry
ID: A poem titled, “For These Brief Moments” with melodic piano music playing. I measure time by the angle dim slivers of light enter my room each morning from behind ever-closed curtains, by the way their faint glow subtly shifts through the day, until it fades beyond the reach of dusk. One year bedbound, I lose track of the natural world, the only place I didn’t question if I belonged. But strains of it still drift through walls in birdsong, distant banter of crows, whispered echoes of rain. Spring’s finches grow chummy in summer. Each day, around noon settling on the windowsill just above my head, bathing in the warmth of the sun for much of the afternoon. I can’t see them but hear soft scraping of claws scampering about, occasional fluttering of wings, bickerings over who sits where. And for these brief moments I am not lonely.
February 21, 2025 at 8:58 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
A poem for the #millionsmissing that have to live with the living death disease of #MECFS and #LongCovid. Even as you’ve gone missing from your own life, you still belong.

#chronicillness #pwME
ID: A Poem titled, To the Millions Missing You’re still part of this world even hidden from view, tossed beneath waves, floating in the deepest shades of blue. You’re still part of this world even when it least seems true, when the life you knew was stolen from you. You’re still part of this world, even forced from view, forgotten by many but we see, we see and remember you.
February 20, 2025 at 10:15 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
#MECFS constant (crash) companion.

#LongCovid #chronicillness #PEM
A picture of me in a teal sweatshirt and a purple eye mask lifted up on my forehead. A yellow dog rests his head on my shoulder.
February 20, 2025 at 10:12 PM