Substitute Speakers

Here, as in every magical culture

The world over, it was never a good

Idea to stand out, writes fairy scholar

Richard Sugg of the disabled changelings

Abused by their parents, as substitutes

Left behind by fairies who stole the real,

Beautiful, healthy children still out there,

Waiting for them. What could a substitute

Up against dwindling odds of survival

And now exposed to tides or freezing ponds,

Beatings, exorcisms, exposure, do?

Survive a little longer, if you could.

You might have known what an awful burden

Children like you are to those raising you.

Who wants to be or have such a burden?

What bothers you, the rare survivor grown

To full, if reduced and cramped, adulthood,

Isn’t them wanting to be rid of you,

But the cruel way they lured and begged the world,

The nonhuman world, to come and take you,

To free them of responsibility

Within typically cruel human rules.

If you were poorly made, magic made you,

The fey, dark spirits and demons made you,

And if folks mistreated you, so you died,

It only proved such dark magic in you.

Eh, bien. The nonhuman world will reclaim

You and them and everyone on its way

To the nothing nothing much loves so much,

And spends an entire cosmos seeking,

But for now you are alive, composing

By writing or reading. So, we’re speaking.