“There is a cyborg hierarchy. They like us best with bionic arms and legs. They like us Deaf with hearing aids, though they prefer cochlear implants. It would be an affront to ask the Hearing to learn sign language. Instead they wish for us to lose our language, abandon our culture, and consider ourselves cured. They like exoskeletons, which none of us use. They don’t count as cyborgs those of us who wear pacemakers or go to dialysis. Nor do they count those of us kept alive by machines, those of us made ambulatory by wheelchairs, those of us on biologics or antidepressants. They want us shiny and metallic and in their image.”

“Sure, you can cauterize a void, but you have a gap even in your teeth. You cry into his pillow so he dreams of you at night.”

strange strained refrain                    The story of

We Should Be Well Prepared

Fear is a commitment, // but I have become its body.

We lived in our bodies as in a constant state of emergency. We wore them out trying to either satisfy or exhaust them. We never succeeded in losing ourselves in sleep or pleasure. We were vigilant and wakeful. We always knew what time it was. We were forever trying to fill or close some gap.

raccoon prayer