Tale of the Rejected Being

The rejected being
was appointed to
a special committee
examining the status of 
healthy creatures. 

The press photo of them all together
in their meeting room was
lovely enough: everyone smiling
broadly, any tension in their eyes
probably a result of bad lighting.

The rejected being took it as
a small step toward acceptance
that the camera
picked them up at all 
as there had been periods

of utter invisibility
in their career. Times when
they knew they’d been at the table,
had done good work, been acknowledged
in the group, and then disappeared

from view almost as soon
as the work was wrapped up
and tied in a neat bow.
(Theirs was the finger
in the center of the bow.)

When the rejected being
suggested early on that the alleged health
of healthy creatures was
in many ways a confidence game, 
the others nodded as if

a nod was better than the wink would be
to a long-dead, well-beaten horse. 
After that, the rejected being could smell
dead horse permeating the meeting room
so often it seemed that

there must be mountains of them
somewhere nearby, invisible
as the rejected being had once been.
They began to speak less of the stench, 
spent meeting time staring

at the press photo
hung so prominently 
behind the head of the table,
where the chair couldn’t see it
at all.