The Code

by Cotton Candye

For those who don't belong in our world, where do they belong? Trans!Sanae

The girl sits at her desk, surrounded

Ones and zeroes run up and down the rows

shoehorned into their place by the grand scheme

assigned their value from conception

the ones may register as zeroes,

the zeroes, ones

and perhaps the transformed values function

well, better

even still some digits register as twos, fours, sevens

and even still they function, perhaps

cleaner, more congruent

the girl knows this

a one conceived as a zero

and still zero to all she knows

for if the rest know

of non-conformity to their binary

they do not accept it

rather, they claim to,

but all they know is ones and zeroes

rigid in their knowledge

even as their world is amorphous

so she, and those like her

escape

escape the norm,

to another realm

or escape themselves

the non-binary drop off the grid

and the code suffers

casualty of itself