Eating Pumpkin Pancakes at Elmo’s
After My Appointment at the Movement
Disorder Clinic
Elmo’s is crowded, of course, at lunchtime,
but we still score a great table and a friendly
waitress. My left foot continues to shake like
a maraca from the stress of doing the required
tricks to allow a PA, no older than my purse,
to ascertain (subjectively speaking) how fast
my disease is progressing. Progression is a key
word with conditions that can’t be cured except
by miracle, misdiagnosis, or anomaly, and it
doesn’t mean anything good. So far, however,
my body is still my own and mostly obeys my
requests, if not quite as efficiently as it once did.
And what I want to do right now, is to sit in this
bright, sunshiny restaurant with all these happy,
talkative people and devour my inflammatory
treat with dollops of real butter and maple syrup.
I like how my husband, sitting across from me at
our table, is eating a ham and cheese sandwich
like this is just another ordinary day in the life of
our decades-long marriage—and how delicious
these pancakes taste, so warm, fluffy, and sweet.
*
The Neurologist
She asked me to walk down
the long hallway, which even
babies can do, their plump feet
slapping the floor, laughing like
little hyenas. But there was no
laughter there—only a stranger
standing with her arms crossed,
watching—her white coat like
a snow-covered mountain so far
in the distance, I thought I would
never reach it. At least you don’t
have breast cancer like me she
said, after making her tentative
diagnosis—suggested a move-
ment disorder specialist, just to
be sure. I never went back to her
office or think of her if I can help
it. But I remember sometimes,
how close she stood to me in that
small, windowless room—her face
like a mylar balloon losing helium,
floating past you after the party.
*
In the Orthopedic Waiting Room
Hope soars like the high ceiling in the orthopedic
waiting room. Patients with arthritis and bursitis,
fractured bones, stiff shoulders and torn menisci,
believe they’ll get better and most, completely
healed. They engage in light conversations, tell
stories about injuries that occurred on mountain-
tops and basketball courts, cycling trails and in
their own homes because of loose rugs or a lack
of handrails in the shower. They speak of aches
and pains in temporary terms if they mention
them at all. So, it’s a relief to be sitting among
so much certainty that all will be well with a bit
of physical therapy and a few cortisone shots—
and not the movement disorder clinic where even
the air is heavy—like all your life you’ve lived
in zero gravity or a swimming pool where you
never carried your own weight and now you do.
I’d much rather be sitting beside a woman with
a walking boot that will soon be discarded than
people who will never walk again or even button
their own shirts. It is too sad, too close to home.
Here, in the orthopedic waiting room, I pretend
(with my mildly inflamed knee) that I’m one of
the briefly sidelined people. I can almost picture
my next downhill run, how fast I’ll go, how far.
*
Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of eight full-length collections of poetry, including The Light that Follows Us Home (forthcoming in the Fall of 2026, Press 53). Her work has received multiple honors, including the International Book Award for Poetry, Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Nautilus Silver Book Award, Atlanta Review International Book Award, Gold Medal in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Nazim Hikmet Poetry Award, Board of Regents Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize, Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize, and many more. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, anthologies, magazines, and newspapers, including Aethlon, “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, JAMA, ONE ART, Poetry Foundation, Poet’s Market, Rattle, Sport Literate, The Christian Century, The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Verse Daily among many others. She lives with her husband in North Carolina.