Trial and Error

Right on schedule

the train comes flying in at a breakneck speed

Screeching to a halt

the conductor jumps to the ground

screaming into his megaphone

“We finally found the reason!”

The “again” he does not say reaches my ears

in a whisper written on medical pages

drawn up in labs made to look like living rooms

filled with children

who do not know what they have done wrong

only that they must be fixed,

because mommy and daddy

do not want to do accept them

for the “disease” that riddles their tiny bodies

they only want a cure so that their baby can grow up to be normal.

Oh, to be able to take those parents by the shoulders,

and shake them until they understand

until they accept their beautiful baby boys and girls for who they are

until they love those scared babies,

so that they can grow to be beautiful strong men and women

who understand the world no one else can

who can solve a math problem in seconds rather than hours

who can create whole new universes in their minds for us to read about

who can paint and draw and recreate nightmares turned to sweet dreams

of love and acceptance.

Oh, to make these medical professionals

stop their tireless, never ending research,

churning out new reasons and causes,

every three months to dump onto this train

that arrives to blast its horn in my face so loud it makes me sick,

because like clockwork

every three months

a new pit forms in my stomach,

because I have been reminded

that yet another set of kids were put on trial,

only to be called errors in a society that strives on perfection

when perfection is broken.

Right on schedule

the train comes flying in at a breakneck speed

Screeching to a halt

the conductor jumps to the ground

screaming into his megaphone

“We finally found the reason!”

and I ask myself when the reasons will fade into acceptance,

because reasons cannot explain the unexplainable.

Please just let them live,

and accept those scared baby boys and girls.

Please do not fill their lives with medical pages and trials,

because the trials will only tell them they are errors,

when the only error I see is in putting them on trial in the first place.

author's note: This is meant to be spoken word poetry. It was written specifically about autism, and the continuous bullshit research they do in hopes of "fixing" individuals with autism, rather than research on supporting them, however, it could be interpreted for a number of things.