Spoken Word

How many steps do I need to take till I touch you?
Till you and I are on the same page,
reading the same novel about a girl and a girl,
or a boy and a girl
or a boy and a boy?

Alice tells me we’re all connected,
six straight lines pulling taut the names of would-be strangers.
Facebook groups claim
there are six acquaintances between me and the president.
Alfred, dear Kinsey, described six degrees of sexuality lying between me
and Billy Graham.
But who can say for certain that we're so different?

And who can say anyone else is a stranger? We could share a mother, somewhere along the line—even if it’s not ours.

But we sit far apart in wooden chairs,
opposite sides of the same room.

Your eyes are closed.
Not noticing colorful auras not in contact with your own
Not noticing disease drifting in through broken windows—
until it climbs, harsh and quiet, into the dark cavern
of your cousin’s lungs.

Your best friend died last week.
But I didn’t know her.
I don’t know you.
I am resting in the world, the rest of humanity
Tell me why should I care?

Why shouldn't I exclaim,

“That retarded, gay, lame test just raped me. It was a massacre.”

How can a test be mentally challenged, homosexual, disabled?

Please explain how a piece of paper can strip me of my freedom, put the mace in my bag, lock my doors, lock my legs, lock my heart, break the barrier held up against horror.

Tell me how an examination can murder—not be the motivation, but actually hold in its non-existent hand a gun to my twenty-year-old head.

Tell me how a series of questions for a college level course can do the damage of Hitler. Tell my grandmother, who fled before Jewish Germany became Nazi Germany. Before millions invisible and unknown became millions dead.

Yes, we say, that test was brutal.

And these are just terms, slang, no real slurs. There is no malicious intent. No one I know can be hurt by them.

No one I know.
And I don’t know you.

You're not in my world,
the tiny realities each of us are trapped in.

Tell me how many stories, details about your life must be told
before I begin to care.

How far away from me do I need to get till I can love you, a stranger?

Tell me, how many steps do I need to take till I touch you?

I//
I hear it’s just six.