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I am standing in a crowd of unfortunate people being jostled about by officious people in MD coats. the ground is sloped to an ending of an alley wherein metal gates stand firmly locked yet hint at an unpleasant ending. I am annoyed by the obsequious behaviors of people around, smelling fear upon them as they make attempts to make vapid banter with people in charge. A white coated petite woman of absurd beauty begins to pepper me with questions and look up at me in disdain, as if i am a hideous giantess while tapping her clipboard and waiting for my answers. I refuse her, she stamps her pretty heel and goes to get someone "who will make me cooperate." A different official begins to shout that I must keep my gaze firmly locked upon the gate, all heads within this startled herd snap in one direction to comply but I ignore them and as the yelling gets louder and the doctors begin to come at me through the crowd, i turn my gaze upon a tall tree whose leaves of golden color flutter and shift in sun, a dappling of radiant light that i find my mind projecting into such that when they attack my body, i am already standing elsewhere upon a corner watching people come happily walking out of a church. they are well dressed, lovely brown corduroy suits, sensible shoes and modest dresses. in their hands, well loved bibles, upon faces and tongue a well rehearsed and loved vernacular that encases their actual lives in a soporific space of safety and grace, they are polite and gracious to me, yet it is brief as they stream along past me, making plans, living their lives. i think to myself from a great inchoate space of constant terror and loneliness that has plagued me from birth that i could learn, i could be like that- i am smart, and what a payback to be comfortable in a group body. to know that i am loved in return for such a small price. i raise my hand and try to speak to them, shuffle in my shoes, timidly, and no sound comes forth - they pass along and it is vapor and the silence of what could have been is deafening until from some other street comes another procession of clanging drums, and foreign instruments, chanting the name of deities unbeknownst to me. a glorious freak show of brightly clothed noisy people with costumed animals, a woman of spanish origin, mantilla riding high above shiny coiled braids, bosom proud in a hand tatted white lace shirt, long skirts dragging flowers- a hungry child held aloft upon a mad woman's shoulders, the stunned gaze of a pure white lamb with a red stripe painted between its eyes. the cries, the tempo, the fervor begins to make me feel as if i could belong, the procession surges and heaves and a huge group of children flows around me who are wild eyed and chanting- for what it makes no difference, it is them calling for the death of all of their parents and for the love of a sacred icon all in the same hysterical rush of voice. they are covered in little bells and the noise is deafening. i am in their center, they are all my children. for one moment i am connected to something greater than me until in en explosion like the atom bomb my eyes are open.