I decided Birdie would have to go.
For the good of the others, of course.

So after the Christmas party
(One has to be humane)

Birdie,

       who never looked at you
       but through you,
       spent most of her days
       turning over and over in her
       thick fingers a flat
       rectangular piece of
       yellow plastic, all the while
       scrutinizing it as if it were
       the Rosetta Stone,

       who tip-toed in and out of the
       linoleum squares on the floor
       as precisely as if programmed,        

       who shrank away from any touch
       as if fearing
       irreversible contamination,

       who screamed shrilly in the middle
       of the bean-planting scene of
       “Jack and the Bean Stalk,”

       who, without changing her
       vacant eyes to anger
       and while tip-toeing in the squares
       to “Farmer in the Dell”
       pushed Janie to the ground
       and made her cry

Birdie

       who could only answer at lunch time
       the question, “Does Birdie
       want this orange?” with
       “Does Birdie want this orange?”

Went.

By June the children
Were still asking
“When Birdie coming back?”

This poem comes from sometime in my forty years of teaching special education. I think it comes under the “inherent worth and dignity of every person” or “justice, equity and compassion in human relationships.” (1,2) The poem was first published in Kaliope.