Today's poem is The Killers Are Coming by Kimberly Ann Priest. It is read by Julia Bouwsma.
The Killers Are Coming
Husband, you have asked me what it's like to be lonely
(Isn't this what you were asking?), so I'll tell you:
each day I am afraid the women I meet in the city,
while walking its streets, will stop being strangers. You see,
at the shops I frequent to touch all the beautiful wares,
I enjoy just enough conversation to not make women
uncomfortable, barriers between us: clothing racks,
checkout counters, tables, windows, doors, and symmetrically
designed displays of items to sell or adorn whatever
they are selling, and always I am afraid they will gossip about
who I might really be. For instance, the Jonah crab,
the rock crab, and the red crab [I have read] are native
to Maine; but, say the scientists at the University
of New England, the killers are coming down the warming
coastline. Non-natives like me, a hybrid Canadian
green crab nick-named 'cockroach of the sea,' aggressive,
living their lives 'pinchers up.' Always, I feel
like the insides of the soft-shell clams that burrow in muck
and sand along these beaches and try to keep my exterior
polished while saying 'Hello!', my muscles contracting
with salted air—a reminder to soothe myself against
overstimulation: car horns and cracks in the bricks
of each building I run my fingers along. I'm not from here
I remember every minute: this city, this state, maybe
this planet. So, because you have asked me to write
what it means to be a neurodivergent, I will tell you: strangers
go blind in my hearing like friends, examine my body
in a bucket—gods smiling down, lab coats bleached white.