Vivian Delchamps
Written right before I went to a small wedding where I,
masked and vaxxed, caught covid
Time to be a wedding guest for the second time in two weeks—
How do you cram lifelong happiness into one day?
How do I celebrate others with a full heart
while running on fumes and 5 hour energies?
The good news is there will be laughter
and the vows will make my heart grow 3 sizes.
In fact, it's all good news. The knowledge
that my happiness will be held up someday too
a beacon of some vast and lovable future.
I'll try not to drink too much. I'll try not to overthink
the weight of patriarchal tradition. Here is a chance for reinvention,
not of the individual but of the constellations,
the network of roots that calls us home.
Here is a chance to exhale fatigue
and inhale those moments that make our lives feel boundless.
Bio
Dr. Vivian Delchamps is a professor of English at Dominican University of California. She is a disabled and chronically ill scholar, teacher, dancer, and writer. She received her B.A. in English with minors in French and Dance at Scripps College (2014). She received her M.A. (2017) and Ph.D. (2022) in English at the University of California, Los Angeles. Delchamps primarily researches and teaches the politics of diagnosis and entanglements of disability, gender, and race in American literature. She is also a poet who writes about embodiment and chronic illness. Her favorite symbol is the ampers&.