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  • Writer's pictureMarías at Sampaguitas

1 Poem by Kayla Bashe


Disease Vector


You said I did not deserve to hold a test tube with the same hands that held a cane

Said I did not deserve to hold a scalpel with the same hands that flapped.

As if the delayed diagnosis, the admonition to take a few days off work- biohazard can be stressful- the attempted bingewatch I slept through because my vision was too blurry to focus on a blinding screen- the night sweats that sent me through five pairs of pajamas between midnight at three AM, the time I pissed myself and threw up simultaneously- was mere miasma caused by sin.


As if my body's failure was my fault. As if my existence was the infection corrupting your data: how dare I still live.


Do not confuse your two-hour lecture on my condition with my postgraduate survival. Dr. Google is more likely to find pertinent knowledge in peer-reviewed journals than Dr. Assumptions, charting fairytales where test results were meant to go.

You mentioned you would not condone my further promotion. That I am too unstable for the field in which I find myself.

Pre-mortem, you ought to be proud of your work.

I am an industrial freezer of a human, white ice and chrome, because I curated my data, explained I was dying, and they walked away. I am a nitpicking vicious tweezer of a human because I was told that I was dying, but not why. I am a bone-cutting saw of a human because I’m supposed to be grateful for what’s left of my life.

You’ve made me into the microbe that crosses the blood-brain barrier. Into the implement that slits your throat.



Kayla Bashe is a queer disabled graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and proud cat parent. Their poetry has appeared in Strange Horizons, Liminality Magazine, Writers Resist, and Cicada, and their short fiction has appeared in The Future Fire, Mirror Dance, and Resistor Vol. 2, among others. Their website is https://kaybashe.wordpress.com/. Find them on twitter at @KaylaBashe.

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