For all the sick and crippled Brown and Black queers still awake at 4:47 AM on a Thursday

In Praise of waking up- or more accurately still being up at 4:47 on a Thursday morning
In Praise of IBS with cramps that threaten to send bodily waste out both ends at a time, and make you think of that scene in Braveheart when Mel Gibson's guts are being pulled from his living body and wound around a spiked and thorny skewer; he was an amateur. (We know this.)
In Praise of cracking knees, popping elbows, shoulder joints that no longer rotate and the pain that reminds us of that when we try to put our bed-side arm up under our pillows so we can lie on our side
In Praise of Herxing, with daily migraines, dizziness, hives and hands so swollen you can barely bend your fingers
In Praise of shit that smells like ammonia
In Praise of boldly canceling plans at the last minute because you're not sure which tricks your body is going to play on you today, but you're pretty sure she's cooking something up
In Praise of shooting pains brought on by having to adjust your gait because of other shooting pains
In Praise of bed, where you'll spend countless hours, often lacking the energy to get up to pee
In Praise of neuro symptoms like brain fog, loss of hearing,
Stumbled, slurred and stuttered speech, and feeling like your skin is on fire
Or maybe cold and soaking wet
And on that note
In Praise of night sweats
And day sweats and anytime sweats, even at 20°F
In Praise of night time rituals- the taking of so many tinctures, and so many pills it's almost a meal in itself (you jokingly call the open handful of your pills "fruit salad")
In Praise of morning pill rituals too
In Praise of being the cranky ass sick crip who demands space in this world that constantly tries to squeeze you out,
or at least make you invisible
I raise my purple cane and point it at the sky for you,
For me
In Praise of us, and all we have to teach the next generation of chronically sick crippled Brown and Black queers.
We shape this world build scaffolding of our bones and stories
Our lives are not inconvenient
We Stay Here.