Capable (for Jacqueline Harris)

Am I capable of what?
Of catching what?
A bus?
I'm sorry. I'm not sure I understand you.
Haven't I just told you of the pain I am in daily,
how I have to school myself to bear it,
how it eats away at the edges of my life
while my courage shrinks smaller every day?
I have such pain in my back,
and in these poor hands of mine;
and my eyesight, too, is failing.
A bus, you say.
I do not understand you.
What is it you would have me do?
Work? Yes I used to work.
Until my body was pressed
past all enduring.
I was a nurse. Yes.
There was a fall. At work.
My life was much altered that day.
Now you come at me with questions
I do not understand.
Have you not heard what I have told you?
Am I capable of catching a bus?
Are you capable of feeling compassion?
Are you capable of human kindness?
Are you capable of love?

Abigail Ottley Wyatt, June, 2015

http://rt.com/uk/209731-suicide-woman-benefit-axed/#.VXv-lifDZzA.facebook

Staring at Austerity

I switch on my phone.

Youtube.

'The Black Triangle List',

a film by disabled

artist-campaigner,

Vince Laws,

and film-maker

Andrew Day,

comes up and I select.

On a black screen,

white words

begin to scroll down.

The film is silent.

A memorial,

that, I am warned,

may upset me.

I begin to read.

People who have died

within 6 weeks

of losing benefits:

10,200 . . .

I concentrate in horror.

Black Triangle’s

ongoing list

from media reports:

100 and rising . . .

Then the list.

Details of austerity-

related deaths.

A man, 53.

Blind and agoraphobic.

Atos found him

Fit for Work.

He took his own life.

A woman, 51.

Breast cancer.

Atos found her

Fit for Work.

She died a few weeks later.

The stories mount.

I feel anger rise.

Where the hell

was duty of care?

In my ears, each

life speaks in the deep

silence of the film.

I watch to the end.

The website addresses

for Black Triangle,

(the Disability

Anti-Defamation

Campaign)

and the Samaritans,

are the final frames.

Then a last paragraph,

beginning,

‘It doesn’t have to be like this . . .’

I repeat the words.

The whisper feels

like it’s gone

around the world;

when it comes back,

somebody has

challenged Austerity.

Cath Davies, May, 2015

Cath Davies lives and writes in North Wales. She has worked in social care for many years. Currently, she is currently studying creative writing at degree level at the Open College of the Arts where she has been a student since 2008.