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"Misanthropy"
Can a soul be autistic? Love knocks, and I recoil. This morning the world comes to me, soft; I say, Carry me in your mouth. The trees bend to whisper, and the sparrows, basking in last night's crumbs, tell me, You must learn to speak again. Every morning I wake up from dreams in which I finally connect with other people--care to--into the blood- orange sunlight of solitude, and the knowledge that I don't. Yet I envy proximity. Each blade of grass learns the same story, memorizes roots, a slow-motion thrust for survival. Dickinson was right: just a turn-- and freedom, Matty! I haven't the excuse of a corset, muzzle; people just puzzle me. The realm of fantasy's more familiar than any lover's touch. How many of us? Or is it cold comfort to count, knowing none will seek the others out? Ghostie, come to me. Let me whisper a story, a tragedy: how much this lady (yet lonely) hated human hands. How Bell invented the telephone, and later, whoever-the-hell invented the fax just for her. Be my salvation: composite of old wives and imagined spirits, alive in memory only, beyond frowns, denial, debt. Ghostie, if you are sky, zoom in; gown me in clouds draped like a shroud: miracle of no saint, only a nerdy sleeper whose hands shattered hearts. Gown me, Ghostie. Clue me in to the secret of the haunting you do, do best; teach me how to live alone and yet be blessed.
--Carol Guess
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