Nursing-Home

I’m safe, fed, and have my physical needs met, but it wears on me. The sameness, and increasingly, the small indignities.

Without a written standing order, every meal becomes a negotiation, and I am the one who loses every time.

Eleven years ago, a tiny stray puppy walked into the room where I was curled up in pain and decided I was his person. Now I’m in a nursing home and he’s with my mom, and the distance between us is the shape of everything disability has cost me.