I am comfortable in the chair why can’t I stay in the chair why do they keep pushing me they know I can’t stand and I sure as hell can’t walk but they are taking me to physical therapy again and that male nurse is telling me today is going to be the the day and when we get to the room I see the parallel bars waiting to fuck me but here we go they are positioning my crutches so I can practice “staging” as they say, balanced over the crutches pressed under my arms as I prepare to transition to the parallels, one arm, then the other, letting the crutches fall away as I grip the bars and keep my arms flexed so I don’t fall again and it doesn’t take long before my arms begin to burn and my fingers tingle and the therapist is telling me to focus on swinging my hips in an alternating pattern even though I have no more feeling in my hips than I do my legs and I can’t even make my dick swing anymore and that male nurse is saying you did it you did it I saw you take a step and I almost believed him and the therapist is telling me to slide my arms forward and let gravity be my friend and I tell him I ain’t got no friends and I am done and he says no you’re not and we are staying here until I reach the other end which is ten feet away but might as well be ten miles and I think about crying but curse instead and slide my left hand forward four inches and lean my torso and slide my right hand forward and my dead legs dangle beneath me and I straighten my arms so my heavy shoes, made to swing like a pendulum with the least movement, can shift foward and the therapist is pretending now, too, but he and the nurse and me all know this is bullshit and the chair is where I am going to be in ten minutes and in ten years but I will be back in here tomorrow trying and I remember when I was nine I had a paper route and one year we had snow and my mother bundled me up and my dad said get your ass out there and deliver the papers and the snow was eighteen inches deep and each step felt like one giant leap for mankind and I thought I would die in the drift that morning and I quit my paper route and I swore I would never go through that again and now here I am newly paralyzed, scarred face, dead passenger, and my ass is back out in the cold and the route is ten feet long but really ten miles and now I am deciding I will not give up after all and I will move my legs move my legs beg them to move pray to God they will move and I can’t hear the therapist or the nurse anymore and I can’t see my arms gripping the bars I see only the blizzard and I think that may be the sun over there and I guess my soul does take a step and I think my body says okay this will work and I lift my arms to say praise Jesus and my legs are there and something shifts inside me and the light changes and my mother takes my right hand and the passenger takes my left and they whisper to me today is the day. you did it, you did it, we saw you take a step.