On a good day, my body doesn’t embarrass me. It does what I ask it, lets me walk short distances and do my job. I don’t notice people staring, don’t trip on my way in to teach a class, sending thirty-five student papers flying everywhere. I don’t have to pause at a threshold and ask a stranger to help me lift my wheelchair up and through a door. No one I don’t really know needs to put their hands on me. No one in the grocery store asks, What happened, sweetie? You’re so pretty to be in a wheelchair! On a good day, my body pulls hard at the hem of my dress, and I hiss back, You don’t exist, and it goes somewhere else, or I do.

In bed, a man pauses, puts a wide, gentle hand on my face and asks, Honey, where are you? Come back here. I want to, and also I don’t.