by J.M.C. Kane
When the building went quiet enough to hear the plaster think,
you came out—jointed apostrophe, comma with legs—
a punctuation for the places light refuses to edit.
I used to hate you for the curriculum of scuttle,
for the way you graded every kitchen with a passing grade at midnight.
But then the trucks stopped bringing oranges,
and the bread learned how to be a rumor,
and the water spoke in a grammar of grey,
and you were still here, brown as the first tool.
You have exactly one theology: continue.
You enter the room like a low rumor that survives the truth.
Even the broom is tired of being a verb.
I don’t bless you—I’m not that generous.
I watch your carapace catch a little hallway sun
and think: someone should have told us
resurrection would be small,
and fast,
and unbeautiful,
And never ending.
J.M.C. Kane is the author of Quiet Brilliance: What Employers Miss About Neurodivergent Talent and How to See It (CollectiveInk U.K.), a celebrated nonfiction work on cognitive patterning and inclusion in the workplace. Disabled, he writes from this learned experience as an ASD-1. His prose work has been published in more than a dozen literary journals and magazines. Kane admires compression the way some people admire tightrope walkers: from a safe distance, practicing only at home. He lives in New Orleans with his family in a house filled with paintings, dogs, and stories that unfold slowly.