A movie screen, dim and blurry,
Chatter in the classroom, a girl looking
at me
Asks for gum.
I hand her mint and watch the screen.
A convertible
Full of rich bums who have been drinking
Roars past a straggling column of humanity,
The people the American fairy tale left behind.

Hold your breath, count to ten, cross your fingers and spin around.
They’re not there.
They’re not there.
Who needs an invisibility cloak
When you have unshaven cheeks,
Dark skin,
A prescription for Thorazine that will
never be filled?
No health insurance,
No house or home,
No wife or children to call your own,
Or worse,
They’re there,
Children, full of hope and promise, invisible.
No one sees them, no one holds their hands,
While Suri, Prince George, Apple, and North
Are showered with gifts they don’t need.
A child can be anything, right?
Wrong.
If you’re born with extra melanin or
chromosomes,
The wrong gonads or the wrong neurons,
Eyes and ears that betray,
Your mother never took those prenatal pills anyway.
Futures shrink, possibilities die,
And no one even deigns to cry.
In my fairytale world,
People aren’t forgotten on the streets,
Little girls don’t get lost and never
come back,
They can always find a gingerbread trail
to lead them back to their mommies.
Nobody dies alone,
The final journey waits until they’re
wrinkled-paper grandmas and grandpas, and ready for the trip.
Young people don’t shiver in bed and cry, they dance, laugh, steal, and fall in love.
Nobody starves their brains and mothers don’t push their children,
Fathers don’t ignore,
And people never say things that rip
and tear hearts for no reason.
Everyone has enough,
And no one concerns themselves with whether their neighbor has too much.
Parents and teachers and gods pay attention,
And babies are only given to maidens and princes who have prayed long and hard.
There are no more ill-matched couples
mated under the purple moon, and
no more children who cower while
their parents fight.
Special children are given to special parents,
And nobody hits a child for not being normal.
Children with extra chromosomes are
cuddled and praised for their own talents,
And lonely boys and girls who rock in their rooms are not pushed or labeled freaks, but have comforting hands put on their backs, and everything is all right from then on.
If I had lady-spider legs, I’d weave a world where the stars align and Christmas trees stay tied to their trucks,
And where if you wished and prayed,
what you needed would be yours.
But I don’t.
I don’t.
And so the doors slam shut, and I weep
for all the people I cannot save.