Human, being
By Eleanor Davies
This is our treaty: human, being.
Convention dictates and you listen,
Fidgeting like a child hearing fairytales.
Then you get up and we disperse,
derogating from our desks and chasing
a dream out into the big wide world.
You start picking up articles.
You toss them from side to side across the court,
a novice to this sport: and now we play.
Being means no bodily detention or mental suspension
No interfering, arbitrary, illegitimate adjectives
Or a speech tripped up by discrimination,
with all its syllables stretching sentences longer and longer
and pulling wool over the world’s blind eye.
In this playground, we declare:
This is the way we be.
Human, being such a common chap,
has no qualifications, but reserves the right
to be left alone in peace,
in a single piece.
To be, but in some corners of this converging world,
not yet not to be.
When there is nothing else left,
the Human writes.
There is no rite of passage to being Human,
except the right to be “me”.