little yellow waiting room with drop ceilings
little yellow waiting room with drop ceilings
piss soaked socks with rubber pads underneath
toilets caked in shit and blood behind a tiny curtain cover
piercing fluorescent lights and a cold metal door, holding an inescapable room behind an unfinished world
I met a person named Brianna, a transgender homeless woman with autism.
She sat across the table, called me kind. She mumbled to me and cried.
No bed the first night. I laid on the ground, occasionally being touched by a strange man.
Brianna woke up scared and confused on the cold floor. A sudden make for the exit, the physical force of multiple men, sedation. A mangled, lifeless body.
blurry jeopardy in a plastic box
the kind man, the medicated man, the shell of a man
laughing nurses, squishy breakfast, shrink who looked the other way
the roach in the corner, sexual assault, and my other “imagined problems”
I stayed by the phone, crying out to The White Man who institutionalized me.
I was released, not because they trusted my plea of sanity, but because The White Man was done with me being locked up.
I shut up and thanked my mentally competent white man,
and Brianna cried for a family who would never come.
small car, pink sponge, shoestring
life changing diagnosis, isolating diagnosis
the cold friend, the infantilizing friend, the denying friend
the buzz of the never ending NYC transport and urge to jump in front of it
While I sit in my studio apartment, attending zoom group therapy with my autistic peers,
Brianna stays in the system, awakening off the floor from screams of r*tard f*ggot from hers.
While l am fortuitously awarded basic decencies, as my idiosyncrasies are exploitable within a capitalist society,
Brianna stays confused in a meaningless world, trapped in a cycle of hell.
