Erasing the Spectrum

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.