A child is born, unknown to it,
powerful persons his life have scrip-
ted, like a game of curling,
have brushed his path, hurling
him through alleys
and cold, uncaring, unnurturing,
felt his soul’s chrysalis form:
society’s indifferent scorn
— for him, the norm.
He grew, as many child will,
even those “nurtured” on swill,
and, somehow, survived.
In his adulthood he said,
to those who looked aghast,
when he spread his wings at last,
“I was the butterfly
born
whom you made a moth;
it’s you who raised me
to eat your cloth.”