Work Text:
IN THE DARK
by Judith
Try to imagine it: the *humiliation*
Of being eight, and newly blind, and
Feeling your sensor cane slip from your hand
And fall through a grating in the sidewalk.
My lifeline cut, I fought back tears and panic,
But I couldn't fight my own helplessness,
And I had to be grateful to the grown-up
Who led me home by the hand like a baby.
"She mustn't go out alone again," I overheard
My mother tell my father, and the tears
Stung my throat like acid. You understand
How grown-up I thought I was until then,
How I revelled in an eight-year-old's responsibilities
As my own peculiar childish self-assertion.
"Watch dinner for me, Miranda, there's a big girl";
"Miranda, keep an eye on Jason, please." Now Miranda
Couldn't keep an eye on anything
Anymore.
They say we live in an enlightened age,
No longer segregated, isolated, warehoused,
Our rights secure, our opportunities abundant --
And I suppose that's true, if you can measure progress
In volumes of Federation regulations.
I'd have traded them all
For the part in the school play they wouldn't let me have,
Afraid I'd stumble into the scenery --
It was their own embarrassment they feared, not mine.
And all the time my latent telepathy, that
Mocking compensatory sense, grew like a monster,
Nourished on their 'sympathy.' So I fled
To Vulcan, to tame my mind, to escape
The thoughts they couldn't hide from me: their pity.
Shall I tell you about the men, or can you guess?
Those who tried to take advantage, for what you do
In the dark doesn't count, and those afraid to --
Thinking me some icy saint or martyr, as though
Losing one sense had shorn me of all sensation --
And those who simply had no use for a woman
Who couldn't reflect back to them
Their own vanity. James Kirk,
Would you have woo'd me as you did, if you'd known?
I could hear it in your voice: the assurance
Of a man who knows how women *see* him,
Calculates the effect each smile will have
Upon the mesmerized beholder.
How ironic it must have been to find that all along
I was as immune to you as I'm immune to Kollos --
Indifferently tolerant
Of his ugliness and your beauty.
You may not want my tolerance. But admit at least
That there's a certain justice in it:
You are both equal, in my eyes,
And that, my friend,
Is more than I've found yet on your world!