The Child on the Shelf

The Child on the Shelf
Josh Fink

He waits without knowing.
Abandoned on a high shelf, the child waits. A shriveled thing, not allowed to develop. Alongside his compatriots, he waits for the chance to live. For he was weighed and measured against his competitors for the right to be born, and those that should have loved him chose to leave him in his glass cage. He does not know. He does not know that his prison keepers draw his cells from him for experimentation. He does not know that outside the door, more like him are being chosen to stay behind like sick animals in a zoo that doesn’t care. So he waits. He waits without knowing that he does wait. Held in limbo in his glass cage. It may be many years before he is released. Or the more likely case is that he will be disassembled and used to prolong the lives of those who have lived long enough. What’s left will be discarded. He is unloved. And there are millions like him. Millions of others were discarded by their mothers. The government sanctions, and even helps pay for the massacre in the names of “science” and “convenience.” What do the children care? They’re not even alive.
So they wait without knowing.