When I was a young and troubled teen,
I ached to be accepted for who I was
but my fizziness was a bad fit
for the tight binaries of moral codes,
derived from fuzzy generalities
which for anyone to live them out
they must be either a machine
or, if actually human, a masochist.
Both choices seemed unattractive.
To find out what Mother thought,
but was refusing to tell me, I read
the 'problem pages' of her magazine
to find out how the grown ups
resolved their problems where choice
made morality a choice of discomfort,
or being an automaton for other automata.
It was a worthy a try but it go me nowhere.
There was no language for what I felt,
beyond 'beyond the pale', an old phrase
originally assigned to the poorest citizens
of nineteenth century European states
who were confined to hinterlands
far away from all capital and wealth,
where they were kept, never to prosper.
Later on I found P.O. box addresses
that my parents knew nothing about,
where I thought I could write off
to tell them more about how I felt
than my family would ever listen to.
They said I could write as often
as I had something to get off my chest
and with each polite reply
they very gently wrote me off
as they proved too attached
to 'infallible family values'.
They let me keep on writing
which may have kept me
from planning my suicide.
Like the poor of the past
who lived beyond the pale,
I sought my own course
and moved away from those
who confined me to misfortune,
If I had to accept misfortune
it must be mine, and nobody else's.
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