Anderson was a cripple.
His gnarled fingers worked the keyboard, forming slow sentences. At the end of each sentence, he would pause, seemingly deep in thought, reflecting on the words he had written. In truth, each sentence was a struggle. The mind and the imagination boldly fought both aches and spasms. Cerebral palsy had been his since birth, a perpetual accomplice. Sometimes when he was tired and felt like being catered to, it was friend. Other times, when he wanted the world to see him as something more than a drooling, flailing monstrosity, it was enemy. Mostly, it was a nemesis, this disease.
Despite the pain and effort, writing never felt like a hardship. Stories spun from him like arachnid silk. He poured letters to form a foundation of words, brought words together to form a frame of sentences, and the paragraphs were the individual rooms of his raised house. He would never hold a hammer, never cut and measure, but he was a builder nonetheless, an independent contractor of conceptualization. Across his pages spread a tide of ink and unfolding introspection, flowing out from a tumultuous inner sea.
She of story was born from him, and for him, a lovely heart of gold in a careless world, a crusader in a land without cause, she saw men of crippled stature as men and even loved them for their purity. Anderson had never met one like her in the world beyond the page, but he was sure if it was possible to assemble her from a collected composite, then reality held a woman of similar virtue.
White screen haunted his eyes, brought him frustration and wonder, so much blank space, so much possibility, so much to ruin with feeble verbosity. He sought her next move, his comely compassionate heroine, where she would go, who she would see, and how her plan would unfold. In stories past and future, the moves she made spread like a forest fire, carried her through chapter after chapter until all was revealed to writer as it was to reader.
His girl found herself in places of peril and narrow escape, and then into the arms of a similar saint, someone with a mind like a diamond, but of shapeless form, never strong, nor weak, just him, the man she loved, a named mortal in her world of danger. Anderson struggled and twisted his mind like a towel, fighting to bring the man form, figure, and face, but he remained as the writer saw himself, shapeless to the world, a thing of arms and legs and teeth, but not of body. A creation unremarkable, forgettable.
Nights when time grew long and hours were spent in the abandonment of hope, she held her creator tight and called him her own, sang him to sleep, and at once gave form to the hero who lived at the end of her lips. To her, he was everything.
Anderson was a cripple who walked through ink and dreams.
Note: I am significantly disabled (Becker Muscular Dystrophy) and refer to myself as being crippled. If you find this term offensive, I apologize, but I won’t sanitize the struggle for the comfort of others. Peace and blessings.
Imperfect Speech is a dope ass reader-supported publication. New posts drop every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. There will also be random posts at random times. Chaos, baby.
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