Outcast
They let me know early.
Not in one sentence,
not in anything anyone could quote later,
but in the way warmth closed
when I entered the room.
You are not one of us.
That was the message.
Not spoken, exactly.
Proven.
There would be no place set for me
that was not provisional.
No welcome without condition.
No hand on my shoulder
that did not also measure
how soon I might be useful.
They celebrated around me.
I watched.
I learned the customs.
The laughter, the rituals,
the small exchanged signs
by which a group confirms itself
and calls that love.
But I was outside it.
Even when I stood among them,
I was outside it.
What they wanted from me
was different.
Not companionship.
Not recognition.
They wanted a vessel.
Something to carry what they refused to see.
Their shame, their fear,
their violence made elegant by silence.
This is the old story.
A family, a tribe, a church, a nation,
it hardly matters.
The group keeps its innocence
by choosing one person
to stand at the edge of the fire
and hold the darkness for everyone.
Then they can say:
There.
Not here.
Not in us.
I think if they had loved me
they would have had to know me.
And if they had known me
they would have seen themselves.
That was never going to happen.
So they named me strange.
Too much.
Too wounded.
Too distant.
As though exile were a trait of character
instead of an arrangement.
Still, I carried it for years,
the old verdict.
As if being refused
meant I was made of something lesser.
As if the unchosen child
were also the unworthy one.
I know better now.
The one sent out
is not always the lost one.
Sometimes he is sent out
because he can still see.
Because he has not learned
to call cruelty order
or emptiness belonging.
The others stay near the fire.
They marry.
They inherit the language.
They tell the story in which they were always whole.
Let them.
What was thrown away
is not always ruined.
What is cast out
sometimes begins there.
Far from them,
beyond the reach of their approval,
something in me remained unbroken.
Not happy.
Not healed.
But intact.
And at times
I think this is what a star is:
not comfort,
not home,
but a body burning
at an impossible distance,
seen best
when there is no other light.
