They name it illness
as if the fever were in me,
not in the smog-choked streets,
not in the cages of fluorescent light
where we pace for wages,
nine to five, like livestock penned
for slaughter.

They call it disorder,
but what is ordered in this world?
Not the sleepless nights,
not the body bent under debt,
not the child abandoned to screens
because parents are shackled
to machines.

Do you not see?
The madness is theirs,
in the endless hum of commerce,
in the hollow ritual of meetings,
in the diagnosis that brands rebellion
as defect.

If I weep,
if I rage,
if I cannot breathe in the box you built,
it is not my soul that is sick.
It is the structure,
the scaffold of lies,
the empire of clocks and contracts.

Nothing in this life is natural,
not the cubicles,
not the concrete,
not the hollow prayers of productivity.

So do not call me broken.
Call me awake.
Call me the fracture in your machine.

---

Carrie Farrar (she/her) is a poet and early childhood educator based in California. Her work has appeared in Vast Chasm Magazine, Four Feathers Press, Kaleidoscope Magazine, The Art of Autism, and Down in the Dirt. She writes about neurodivergence, tenderness, and the quiet revolutions of survival.

Instagram: @carrie_crafted_verse