had one shorter leg
which would disclose
the reason for my stumbling
into bedposts,
into prose.
She could have
suffered from Tourette's
and thus
my intermittent
vocal tics,
profanities.
Or synesthesia.
I would understand
why sounds can hurt:
the touch of words,
and dissonance,
which I can taste.
Autistic? Yes.
That could explain
my shrinking
in the midst of crowds,
my need to separate,
to fade.
My twin, a poet?
Not a malady,
except in spaces
where the loneliness
of being strange
can't be explained.
(Inspired by Claire Bateman's prose poem "Reprieve" in her collection, Clumsy, where a mother must choose between two children she is carrying, one a human female, the other a pearl, and the chosen girl absorbs the pearl: ...like a pearl, I am mostly a loner, and I tend to surround myself with loners, just as each pearl pierced through by the same golden chain basks in the luminescence of the others even as she secretly believes she's the only one suspended there, and whines, "I'm so lonely.")
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