They don’t ask why.
They ask when was your last meal,
as if hunger
were the only kind of absence
worth charting.
I sit on butcher paper
wearing the brittle hesitation
of a waiting room,
while the ceiling leaks
menthol fluorescents
and the air smells like
caution disguised as bleach.
The one in the lab coat
tilts his head,
pen clicks,
Have you been feeling… elevated?
as if joy
isn’t supposed to crack ribs
with its fists.
No, I don’t mention
that yesterday the trees bowed
like old saints
when I passed,
or that I wept because
the wind made a sound
like my father’s voice
in a dream.
That would betray the script.
And betrayal
gets a dosage increase.
I file my feral
behind a nod.
Behind pharmacy-speak
and false positives.
Behind bloodwork
that says nothing about
what’s rotting
in the places
they won’t biopsy.
I want to tell him
my thoughts are not chemical.
They’re knives
Polished carbon steel – hard, brittle, reflective,
sometimes beautiful.
Sometimes necessary.
Always real.
But I’ve learned
to serve my sentences
like meals in separate beds
lukewarm,
unshared,
swallowed without salt.
To speak too brightly
is to be manic.
To speak too dark
is to be depressed.
There is no setting
for human
on this dial.
So I keep quiet.
I let the poems clot
the ink in my pen
Wounding the stories bitten-
bidden behind wisdom’s teeth.
I murmur to cotton paper
because it doesn’t flinch.
They think silence
is safety.
They think
composure is the cure.
But I have rage
that could gut a cathedral,
and sorrow
like rusted piano wire.
Still,
I smile.
They like that.
They don’t want my mind.
They want metrics.
They want to know
if the system still holds.
If the formula
has finished
taming me.
And so,
when I speak,
I shape my voice
into pills.
Easy to swallow.
No aftertaste.
I write it down instead
the revolt,
the revelation,
the real me
scratched into notepads,
the wrong direction,
so the ink runs dry
and fold it into pages
for descendants
who won’t know
I was ever
a case number.
Maybe they’ll read it
someday
and feel the freight of it
They won’t lift ribbons of argentine or bronze-
only millstones, earned in silence, worn like heirlooms.
the human inside the specimen jar,
still warm,
still sparking.
screaming.
set-apart.
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