Cabin Fever

If I Scream Will You Hear Me?

6-20-03

         (or "How I Spent My Solitary Confinement")

The sparing had spoiled, so they gave the child the rod.
Gave it to 'em good.
Tied 'em up, threw 'em in a room without windows.
In a cold spell he could feel the wind
through the cracks in the wall.
He could hear the joy happening outside;
the forbidden taste of laughter
aching inside his ears
as he slumped forward slightly and shimmer down the wall.
"There will be no fun today,
for the ceiling is covered with clouds
and no one will hear me
when I scream so loud
that the little wobbly hanging thing in the back of my throat
looks so red that it turns my mouth black,
like in a cartoon,"
he would remind himself
every time the other kids made the noises
that children hard at play make.
It didn't matter if his substandard grades
were still better than theirs,
or if his proper shoes were properly tied,
or if he could sing his ABC's in Spanish.
His reward was a padded room.
His dessert was living vicariously through others,
deriving expressionless enjoyment from theirs.
His senses were the walls placed around him,
managing his hunger, pain and pride.
They felt for him because he couldn't.
No one knew he was there,
because everyone else got normal things
and there was nothing left when it was his turn
to sift through the rest.
Birth beat him into a shell.
His name is only saturated with a savant-like endearing quality
that will never get to be examined,
much less appreciated.
He's too normal, too eerily normal;
plenty smart with knowledge so heathenly basic
that no other child's mind could ever accept him for.
There is no one to love him so love become pagan and unrefined.
There are four walls. One door. Forty-eight ceiling tiles.
No chairs. Twelve cracks in the wall. Five flies today so far.
One child. No sense of living. One body. One brain. No hope.
No cure.