STARTLE
Katie Aubrecht
PDF of this Piece // PDF of Issue 5
I was given a name with my son’s inheritance;
blood bonds cemented in an unusual startle.
No hostage to fortune,
offices, tests, triggers and dominant traits dislodged traces of exaggerated reflexes.
“Bad nerves” recalled.
– HYPEREKPLEXIA –
It gives perplexing simultaneity,
relief and anxiety now to know.
Who I was when
body tensed, breath left, stomach dropped, heart skipped
and leapt through skin.
No longer a figment, disability is real. So real it passed.
Katie Aubrecht, PhD, is a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Postdoctoral Fellow at Mount Saint Vincent University, where she also works as Research Coordinator at the Nova Scotia Centre on Aging and teaches with the Graduate Department of Family Studies and Gerontology.