ABHUMAN

I.

The caesarian baby tried to crawl its mother’s intestine,
to fold itself back into the warm coils of her,
but the scalpel caught it first,
cutting the impossible path from it to her,
and it emerged, wet and screaming,
slick with the fluids of modern miracles and medicine.

The air hit its lungs and it shuddered,
a single, small inhale that tasted of antiseptic and blood.
Hands moved quickly, precise and gloved,
lifting it, drying it, weighing it.
The mother’s skin was pulled, stitched,
muscle and fat closing around the now empty residence
as it lay on a metal tray,
a perfect, shivering object.

II.

The quiet child rarely cried.
Its tongue remained too large for its mouth,
flesh insisting on its own rules.

Its father didn't allow the relatives near it,
no pinching of its cheeks,
cloth sliding off its limbs as the body denied ornament,
and it did not let itself be swaddled.

III.

Nani noticed the small compulsions that pulsed through it,
hand flapping, fingers tapping, the body never still.

She was not kind.

Her eyes measured it like a flaw in the fabric of the household.
She pressed the child’s small hand against the back of its thigh,
and made it pinch hard enough wince,
hard enough to feel something other than the hum of the intolerable self,
to mark the body when the mind threatened to
spill.

It learned quickly,
the motion etched into skin.

IV.

its tongue a cactus pricking its own cheek while it smiles, and the pinch on the back of the thigh becomes a ritual of measurement, a way to mark the self so the self doesn’t spill into the world, the changeling feeling the pressure of it, the pain that keeps the body aligned with expectation, a changeling that cannot stop noticing, cannot stop mirroring, cannot stop the unnatural rhythm of its own being, watching its hands move, its feet move, its eyes reflect, and thinking, thinking, thinking; changeling becomes aware too early and too often and never stops, changeling watching changeling watching hands watching face watching house watching for the moment it does something wrong, and mirroring starts before intention, mirroring tone, mirroring posture, mirroring quiet, because quiet keeps house intact, so changeling learns stillness the way other kids learn prayer, through repetition and fear and correction, through the body first, because the body is always betraying something, fingers tapping, shoulders lifting, eyes that don't touch for long enough, so changeling edits itself in real time, rewinds, redoes, smooths the surface, becomes less visible, more acceptable; changeling knows when it is being observed and knows when it is failing, knows the difference between silence that is allowed and silence that is suspicious, knows that being real is not the same as being safe, so it chooses safe, again and again, changeling is very good at continuing, very good at adjusting, changeling remains awake inside itself, a changeling, always a changeling, too aware, too precise, too unnatural, and still it moves, still it moves, still.it.moves, still.it.is, stillitis,stillitis;