Deafness

She raised her voice to a shout, unnecessarily

“Can you hear me now?” she enunciated airily.

“I just need you to face me,” I tried to explain

“I read lips just fine.” My oft refrain.

How to explain what deafness is like?

Earplugs, or airplanes, or post-concert-tinnitus

All the time, without fail, a look-alike

Of what it really is, with diffidence and impotence.

Can’t hear whispers, murmurs, what people say

Behind your back or even across your face.

Murmuring snark that you miss, so you pay;

You’re a socially inept disgrace.

Don’t deaf people wave their hands in the air

And grunt like animals when using their voice?

A species different from you, who can hear

Living like this was their choice.

Then there’s me, raised orally.

It’s what was done back then.

Til hearing folk learned that morally

Deaf kids do best lumped in

Together.

I speak clearly and people act like they were tricked.

I stand in two worlds but fit in neither.

I can speak but can’t hear, ill-equipped

To do anything but straddle, an appeaser.

I’ve been chastised for ignoring more times than I can count

Because hearing people don’t get it, they just don’t understand

That no matter what I do, what I even CAN do to surmount

The deficit you despise, as though it was planned

Will never be enough to bridge the gap.

So I stand stranded, surveiling the land

If only I had a hearing map

To make all the hearies understand

Deafness.