The man at the pool

I’d been paralysed in my legs for thirty eight years.
It came on when I was eighteen,
just getting going.
All my hopes came crashing down
Literally.

I had a few family, brothers, sisters,
but they could only help so much
they had their own burdens to carry.
and I gradually lost touch with them.
Then I gradually lost everything:
my friends, my health
my confidence, my hope.
I never had much
But I lost even the little I could cling to.

After a few years I all but lost the memory
of what it feels like to stand on your own two feet.
I became what people saw
a man lying in the dust and dirt
legs collapsed underneath him,
a pair of thinning, useless limbs.
I became a cripple in my mind
- it’s who I was.

I’d been there at that pool for
I don’t know how long...

Continues