Erasing the Spectrum
Location
air. bleach. metal.
we did it out of mercy.
you see, it didn't speak
as we speak. there was no other way.
volts. roads. bridges.
at first i only contemplated, and then
I knew I had to.
that's not my daughter.
it's a chrysalis
and all the king's horses and all the king's men
can't break it. i know she's in there somewhere. this is all just
faulty wiring, perhaps,
I shouldn't have taken any medicine when i was ill.
but listen to me, this isn't blood on my hands,
you don't know what it was like, to be outside of her,
the creature that stole my children. it was all too late.
walls. fluorescence. a leash.
you don't have to treat them like people, they won't be people
until we've taught them a lesson. out in the backyard,
I'm sorry we couldn't train you like a beast
to be one of us.
_____________________________
from long past death:
I loved you, but you
wouldn't have seen it; I braved the storm, the assault on my soul,
in every kitchen light and the tags in my starched prison. I screamed,
didn't I?
I hated the pain, deep in the dark
of my belly
after another diet change, another
quick fix. and I ask you
what was there to fix?
why did you disbelieve
the speech in my drawing, in my spinning? I wrote you poetry in
the language of textures.
And I cannot tell you now myself, because,
to you I was a candle flame
in the wrong color
and you silenced my wick. so--
how many more of us
how many more who wouldn't extend
the graces of Hippocratus, as if we
were only blood and clay?
You cannot anthropomorphize a human.
but you can believe in it, and continue to earn their favor, and succor,
that my cinders were a mercy.
You will be wrong, but then,
we were only the neurally divergent. after all.