Category: Mini-works Mondays

Poetry, fiction, and nonfiction (small wordcount)

A banner image that explains there are 27 stories in the anthology written by and starring folks, who are disabled, Deaf, Blind, neurodivergent, Spoonie, and/or they manage mental illness. There is also recognition of the support from the Canada Council the arts. And there’s an image of the cover of the anthology with the aurora nominee logo beside it.

Mini-essay Monday: Our CripLit Village

On By Cait (like Kat) GordonIn CripLit, disability advocacy, Mini-works Mondays, pandemic, publishing, Spoonie challenges, WritingLeave a comment

Note: Crip is a reclaimed term that many disabled folks use as a word of empowerment. CripLit is a term for disability literature.

January 19, 2023


Our “village” is a place we all seek. It’s that band of friends and strangers who become friends… a group who share our lived experiences. That collective where being perfect never has to exist. We can be messy, and we celebrate our messiness. Brains don’t hafta brain optimally. We understand that and work with it. 

Last night, I took my sick, exhausted body into my office, along with my brain that lived in a dense fog, and co-emceed a virtual book launch of Nothing Without Us Too. I moderated a panel where we were all delightful hot messes. Our answers were edifying, validating, honest, even snarky. Together we just worked. We just clicked. We accommodated, accepted, and celebrated each other where we were at. That absence of the pressure to present as “normal” leads to unrestrained freedom of the soul. 

Sometimes at book launches, one wants to impress, to “sell” the work. This is a business after all. But last night, all we cared about was the community we had with each other—disabled, neurodivergent, and mentally ill authors.  We laughed, we vented, we did nothing to be palatable to an abled, NT audience. People would have to deal with our perspectives, our experiences, our journeys. CripLit…the director’s cut. 

There is such a constant pressure for us to “perform” and “mask” to adapt to the Normies’ structure of society. It’s draining. So, to show up as our authentic selves, unedited, is a gift. A gift we need to bring to each other more often. 

This is why I am an advocate in literary circles. Spread out, we’re tokenized. Together, we’re a community to be reckoned with. Separate, we’re unique crystals of snow, but together, we’re a boulder torrenting down a hill, able to take out an entire township.

And we’re coming for you, ableism. We’re coming for ya. 

A greyscale close-up of me, standing in front of a blank background. I am a white woman with short silver hair cropped closely on the sides. I am wearing dark metallic rimmed glasses with rhinestones on the side. I’m wearing silver hook earrings with flat beads and a plaid shirt.

Cait Gordon is an autistic, disabled, and queer Canadian writer of speculative fiction that celebrates diversity. She is the author of Life in the ’Cosm, The Stealth Lovers, and the forthcoming Iris and the Crew Tear Through Space (2023). Cait also founded the Spoonie Authors Network and joined Talia C. Johnson to co-edit the award-nominated, multi-genre, disability fiction anthologies Nothing Without Us and Nothing Without Us Too.

beautiful calm coast dawn

Mini-NonFic Monday: Processing Noise, Seeking Stillness

On By Cait (like Kat) GordonIn Autism, Mini-works Mondays, Spoonie challenges, This blog's postsLeave a comment

Genre: Nonfiction

In the stillness there is contentment. Less processing of sound and more flow of thought. I’m more at peace here, devoid of noise. Although I have no idea what totally quiet means. Even when voices aren’t present, there’s the hum of the fridge, the lamp timer softly ticks, and the fan of our furnace is constantly having an opinion.

Even so, amid the ever-present sound, I can sometimes feel the stillness. It comes from my own self. I like to communicate quietly. Someone in my past told my parent I was mute. I had to learn to be boisterous, feeding on the energy of my extroversion, copying the delivery I heard from comedians. Discovering what stuck and what bombed. Eventually, my humour was my own. I would be the life of the gathering. People got excited when I entered a room because they knew I would be entertaining.

I never had the chance to know what it would be like to be a non-vocal extrovert. For some reason, speaking out loud is important to so many people.

I would have loved to have learned signing as a child. Then, I could express my humour while being silent. The lack of voices would have made me feel calmer too, and I’m sure the banter would have been amazing.

I don’t understand ASL, but even without knowing the signs, I love watching the movements of the conversations. It soothes me. The facial expressions make me feel so engaged. Where I live now, they speak with their vocal chords and almost completely free of emotion. It makes me feel sad. I guess I prefer quiet communication with loud emotions.

My relationship with sound has always been complex. It can seduce me or repel me. I can be hard of hearing and acutely hearing at the same time. Voices often elude me. They get buried underneath all the other noises in the room.

Music has always been a huge part of my life. But I can love the drums yet go into a panic over repetitive patterns. Perhaps controlling the beat and varying it with riffs and rolls makes it okay in my brain. Whenever I was in a band whose musicians didn’t bother listening to each other, I felt tormented by the ghastly intersecting of sounds that didn’t go together. I would often lose my temper or beg them to stop playing, not understanding how they could be so calm amid the chaos.

Today though, I’m alone. It’s my day to control how much noise I hear. I don’t have to speak out loud for hours. This is paradise. A temporary visit to Innisfree. My only regret is that time is passing too quickly, and I will have to use my voice soon.

I wish people understood, even in my own family, how much stillness I need.

Because it dials everything back.

There is beauty in still moments.

If only they didn’t have to be so fleeting.

Processing Noise, Seeking Stillness © 2023 Cait Gordon. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact Cait Gordon.

A greyscale close-up of me, standing in front of a blank background. I am a white woman with short silver hair cropped closely on the sides. I am wearing dark metallic rimmed glasses with rhinestones on the side. I’m wearing silver hook earrings with flat beads and a plaid shirt.

Cait Gordon is an autistic, disabled, and queer Canadian writer of speculative fiction that celebrates diversity. She is the author of Life in the ’Cosm, The Stealth Lovers, and the forthcoming Iris and the Crew Tear Through Space (2023). Cait also founded the Spoonie Authors Network and joined Talia C. Johnson to co-edit the multi-genre disability fiction anthologies Nothing Without Us and Nothing Without Us Too. 

Featured photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Wooden table with white mug that has a floral pattern. the mug is filled with wild flowers and it’s a gorgeous day with lots of green folliage in the background

Mini-NonFic Monday: Not A Horrible Day

On By Cait (like Kat) GordonIn Health, Mini-works Mondays, This blog's posts, WritingLeave a comment

CN: Implied suicidal ideation Genre: Nonfiction

This isn’t a horrible day. There have been many, but not today. I don’t feel horrible, things don’t appear horrible, and the absence of horriblenesses gives me hope.

Hope has been something that I’ve constantly lived for. But hope slipped away from me last year. And I almost slipped away from Planet Earth as a result.

But then another Not Horrible day happened when dozens of folks told me that I mattered. Then I wanted to stay and live for the other less horrible days ahead of me.

Like today.

I like dwelling in an absence of horribleness.

It’s nice here.

I think will make it a play day.

For who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Gonna hope for the best though.

But for now, I will enjoy myself.

Not A Horrible Day © 2023 Cait Gordon. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact Cait Gordon.

A greyscale close-up of me, standing in front of a blank background. I am a white woman with short silver hair cropped closely on the sides. I am wearing dark metallic rimmed glasses with rhinestones on the side. I’m wearing silver hook earrings with flat beads and a plaid shirt.

Cait Gordon is an autistic, disabled, and queer Canadian writer of speculative fiction that celebrates diversity. She is the author of Life in the ’Cosm, The Stealth Lovers, and the forthcoming Iris and the Crew Tear Through Space (2023). Cait also founded the Spoonie Authors Network and joined Talia C. Johnson to co-edit the multi-genre disability fiction anthologies Nothing Without Us and Nothing Without Us Too. 

Featured photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com.

milky way illustration

Mini-fiction Monday: With My Kind

On By Cait (like Kat) GordonIn Flash Fiction, microfiction, Mini-works Mondays, This blog's posts, WritingLeave a comment

CN: Ableism, eugenics
Genre: science fiction

Fun fact: This was the first micro-fiction I had ever written, and it first appears in Stargazing: Microtales from the Cosmos.


They’ll be coming for me. Fine. Anyway, there’s something so satisfying about a high-speed chase through space involving a Crip at the helm.

Huh.

Funny how our leadership brags that our planet’s a galactic god of tech, but they’re oblivious to the spirit of disabled sentients. Whatever. I’m here, alone for the moment, lights off but with life support, staring at the stars.

I’d been scheduled for “restructuring.” Well, the collective They felt people with legs that don’t leg were an impediment to their medical accolades. Being corralled to the Institute (read: institution) with about a hundred others was super fun. Thank goodness for Sheena. Our late-night convos from our bunks made everything bearable.

“You’re a star,” she’d sign. “You need to shine with your own kind.”

I finally had the courage to sign back, “I love you,” the night before they took her away.

She wasn’t voiceless. I heard her screams. The restructuring didn’t take.

So, for the next weeks, I watched. Each security team, what they carried, when they took breaks.

They shouldn’t have left that hoverchair unattended.

Nor the Crip Carrier.

Gorgeous ship, too.

I’m with my own kind now, Sheena.

“I love you.”

With My Kind © 2020 Cait Gordon. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. This is a work of fiction from the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. For more information, contact Cait Gordon.

A greyscale close-up of me, standing in front of a blank background. I am a white woman with short silver hair cropped closely on the sides. I am wearing dark metallic rimmed glasses with rhinestones on the side. I’m wearing silver hook earrings with flat beads and a plaid shirt.

Cait Gordon is an autistic, disabled, and queer Canadian writer of speculative fiction that celebrates diversity. She is the author of Life in the ’Cosm, The Stealth Lovers, and the forthcoming Iris and the Crew Tear Through Space (2023). Cait also founded the Spoonie Authors Network and joined Talia C. Johnson to co-edit the multi-genre disability fiction anthologies Nothing Without Us and Nothing Without Us Too. 

Featured photo by Philippe Donn on Pexels.com

blue and purple cosmic sky

Mini-fiction Monday: Stretched Thin, Longing for the Deep

On By Cait (like Kat) GordonIn Mini-works Mondays, poetry, SFF Fiction, This blog's postsLeave a comment

CN: stress, mental health Genre: space opera poem

Pulled.

Pulled.

Pulled in all directions.

This can’t be good, right?

My suit won’t tolerate much more of this.

I feel like that elastic action hero from days of old.

So far there’s only some pressure on my joints.

They said that the suit would only stretch thin and not me.

But I’m also stretched thin.

In my mind at least.

T-minus-never will I be left at peace it seems.

Even in space, where I long to be.

Too many thoughts, too many demands on myself.

Pull, pull, pull.

They’re telling me I’m tolerating it well.

The suit that is.

Fabric that will keep me alive in deep space.

I wish they had invented something like this for my brain.

Stretch it, stretch, stretchity-stretch.

Then it all bounces back again.

Intact. Serene once again.

When was the last time I felt serenity?

I long for a vessel alone, in the quiet.

Where my mind is also silent.

No one but me and the stars and planets and quasars.

Where I can just be.

Where I wake up every day to zero to-dos.

Where my companions are comets and stars.

Where each moment is unscripted, unstructured.

Where no one calls my name.

Where no one asks me anything.

But now they are calling me.

Making sure I’m conscious in this testing module.

Where they pull, pull, pull.

I say the affirmative, wishing I weren’t.

Wishing it would all shut down.

Too many thoughts.

Longing for the silence.

Hopefully soon, I will be up there.

I just have to smile and nod for now.

Then without them suspecting a thing,

I will get my ship.

And I will take off.

Away from the pull.

Away from the noise.

Away from my thoughts.

With only the deep to welcome me.

Stretched Thin, Longing for the Deep © 2023 Cait Gordon. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. This is a work of fiction from the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. For more information, contact Cait Gordon.

A greyscale close-up of me, standing in front of a blank background. I am a white woman with short silver hair cropped closely on the sides. I am wearing dark metallic rimmed glasses with rhinestones on the side. I’m wearing silver hook earrings with flat beads and a plaid shirt.

Cait Gordon is an autistic, disabled, and queer Canadian writer of speculative fiction that celebrates diversity. She is the author of Life in the ’Cosm, The Stealth Lovers, and the forthcoming Iris and the Crew Tear Through Space (2023). Cait also founded the Spoonie Authors Network and joined Talia C. Johnson to co-edit the multi-genre disability fiction anthologies Nothing Without Us and Nothing Without Us Too. 

Featured photo by Felix Mittermeier on Pexels.com

face mask on blue background

Mini-Fiction Monday (a day late): Deliver Me From This Pandemic Hell

On By Cait (like Kat) GordonIn Flash Fiction, Mini-works Mondays, WritingLeave a comment

by Cait Gordon


Genre: Realistic Fiction, CN: Eugenics, Ableism, Inaccessibility

“Humanity started with Eden, and now it seems we’re in hell.”

“What the heck to do you mean by that?” asks Ed.

Cherie slumps against the table, then holds a hand out to stroke the handle of her rollator. It’s smooth, comforting. This is a time for comfort. This hell. This hell that never seems to end. 

“I dunno. Never mind I said anything.” 

Her words are muffled by the soft woollen sweater she loves. Periwinkle blue. That colour is a stim for her eyes. It’s cool but happy. She’s tried to explain this to Ed. His usual comment: “You’re wearing that blue one again?”

“Listen,” he says now, “We’re outside. Finally. It’s what we both wanted, right?”

“I need to put my mask back on.”

“Why? It’s a big room and not many people around.”

Cherie wants so badly to bop Ed one. Violence apparently never solves anything. Whoever said that must have never been interacted with a clueless abled. She still loves Ed, though. She supposes. He wears her out sometimes with his failure to see things as they are. 

Wrapping her elbow around her face, Cherie bends over to the bag in her mobility device and grabs a white KN-95 mask. Her fingers are misbehaving today and tremble as she puts on the protective piece. 

Ed isn’t wearing his. He scowls at her. 

“Can’t we just do anything normal anymore?”

Cherie rolls her eyes. “Dude, what is normal to you and most other non-disabled or high risk folks is a right heap of crap for us. This pandemic has brought out the worst in people. All I’ve heard from government officials, medical professionals, and even members of my own family is that we need to live with this virus. Well, maybe they want to catch it several times and play Russian roulette with their immune systems, but I don’t. Do you have any idea how much I think in a day about my body? Like, even before 2020?”

Ed’s scowl is replaced by that confused expression again. The one he wears so often when she’s talking about her health. 

“I can’t leave the house without thinking how long we will be,” Cherie continues. “If I’ll need snacks in case hypoglycaemia comes to call. Or if it’s longer, do I pack a small lunch because of my food sensitivities. Then there are my legs. Will they be okay for a cane or should we bring the rollator in case there’s too much walking or standing? Should we bring the combo rollator-wheelchair in case my feet become a neuropathic symphony? Is the place where we’re going accessible at all to let me enter the joint, will the aisles be large enough to move around? Are there going to be searing lights and music that blasts bass into my sterum? That’s part of my normal!”

And then Ed does it. He sighs. 

“Okay, you know what?” says Cherie, carefully standing up, “You can go visit the sun. I’m out of here.”

“Whoa, whoa, I didn’t say anything!”

Cherie unfolds the black mobility device until the seat snaps in place. She unlocks the brakes and turns to leave. 

Ed puts a hand on each handle, over her hands. 

Fire fills her pupils. “Get. Your. Hands. Off. Her.”

He pulls them away as if burned by the flame decals on the chassis.

“Sorry, okay? I just don’t want you to go! We never get out anymore.”

She raises her index finger. “That’s not my fault. You always propose activities that might end in harm for me. Almost every time you suggest something, I need to add to my list of thinking for my body. It stresses me out to no end!”

“Then just stop thinking so much!”

Cherie laughs. It’s not a happy sound. On reflex, Ed takes a step back from her. 

“Spoken like someone who has never transitioned from a life before chronic illness and disability,” she says. “Someone who has never had to grieve who they were before they could accept and love their new self as they are. Who has to constantly live in a world that does nearly nothing to accommodate them. Don’t you think I wish I could move out of my front door and not have to prepare in advance for the constant possibility of inaccessibility? I would be a heckin’ lot more laid back if the support needs of folks like me were already woven into spaces!”

Ed sighs again, but this time it doesn’t set Cherie off again. 

“Yeah, I know,” he admits, “I don’t really get it. I only want us to be together and just… live.”

“I want that too,” says Cherie. “But I need you to take the protections I need seriously. I bet we could do a ton of things if we put our thinking caps on together.”

His eyes perk. 

“I could really use a thinking partner,” she adds. 

“Like someone who takes the pressure off you having to think by yourself?”

“Yeah.”

Ed smiles. The breeze from the open window fluffs up his brown swoopy bangs. He reaches into the right pocket of his dark jacket and pulls out a black KN-95 mask. 

“I might not be as knowledgeable as you,” he says, putting on the mask, “but I will do my best to help.”

Cherie grins under her mask, but it also shows in her blue-green eyes. “Sometimes I get exhausted from being an ‘educator’ about my criptastickness, but other times, it’s a time investment… for future happiness.”

“Well, I love you, okay? And I offer myself as a willing student. I hope you feel I’m worth the time, clueless wonder that I am.” He winks and reaches out a hand. “May I?”

She clasps it. 

“What do you want to do today?” Ed asks.

Cherie looks to the side as the wheels churn in her thoughts. Ed knows enough to be silent and patient when she does this. He sighs a third time, but happily, awaiting her reply. 

Deliver Me From This Pandemic Hell © 2023 Cait Gordon. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. This is a work of fiction from the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. For more information, contact Cait Gordon.

A greyscale close-up of me, standing in front of a blank background. I am a white woman with short silver hair cropped closely on the sides. I am wearing dark metallic rimmed glasses with rhinestones on the side. I’m wearing silver hook earrings with flat beads and a plaid shirt.

Cait Gordon is an autistic, disabled, and queer Canadian writer of speculative fiction that celebrates diversity. She is the author of Life in the ’Cosm, The Stealth Lovers, and the forthcoming Iris and the Crew Tear Through Space (2023). Cait also founded the Spoonie Authors Network and joined Talia C. Johnson to co-edit the multi-genre disability fiction anthologies Nothing Without Us and Nothing Without Us Too. 

Featured photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com