More on Monsters & Disability (and growing up with C.P.)... in verse.

So, in this comment thread, spiralsheep and I happened to come up with a writing "duel," where we would each write a poem (or story) in a Cycle. This is poem that came to me today, to fulfill the first part of the Cycle.

[And for those of you readers at home, who are following along with your Isidore of Seville's Monster Classification Scorecard, the Monster in this poem (the poem's narrator) would most likely be classified as Category 6 (Mixture of human and animal parts [or natures]) or Category 9 (Born with Disturbed Growth)]

Part One of the Cycle: The Monster Challenges the Boundaries

You stand there, with my file in your hand:
A long white coat beneath fluorescent light.
Your voice is measured, your expression, bland
To thinly veil the arrogance of Might.
With scientific words, you speak your part;
Your glance betrays a superstitious heart.

As though I were not even in the room
(And near enough to catch stale coffee breath),
You lay out (for my mother) all the doom
Of raising such a daughter so bereft.
For I will never walk as humans can:
Upon two legs, and tall, across the Earth.
With crutch tips as my hooves, I'll cross each span
In trotting gait, because of star-crossed birth.
With practiced stroke and swiftly moving pen
(Just as you've done with other children's lives),
You mark me down as something less than "Man."
To fit me to a list that you've contrived.
You circumscribe my life in dark blue ink.
My flesh and mind are mapped (or so you think).