‎"My advice to other disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability doesn’t prevent you doing well, and don’t regret the things it interferes with. Don’t be disabled in spirit, as well as physically." – Stephen Hawking

Odilia Rivera Santos

You can get up,
tangled in bedsheets,
fall out of bed,
brush your teeth,
shower,
get dressed and
eat breakfast in an
automaton state and
no one will stop you;
however, you might choose to
slow down production of
meaningless movement and
appreciate the floor cool
under your feet,
the warm water splashing
onto your half-asleep face,
the flame of a working stove
on which you place a coffeemaker.
Take a walk down a street,
senses engaged to notice
how when the skin
of a gray tree up ahead
catches the light of a
too-bright-for-January day
it resembles raw silk and
how you dreamt as a child of
being invited to a grand ball
and a few minutes after awakening
for the second time while awake,
a child points to you mid-stream
in his dream and says
"She would be the princess!"