Epistle of the Glitched

Epistle of the Glitched

by Damascus Dancings

To the elders of the smooth-faced world,
To the chair-sitters, the neurotypicals,
The ministers of eye contact and affect control,
To the brokers of belonging, the gatekeepers of gesture:

Grace and fracture unto you.

You do not see me. Not really. Not until it breaks.
Not until the privilege frays at the hem.
Not until the white skin no longer signals safety,
Because the mouth stutters. Because the gaze misfires.
Because the hands tremble in all the wrong places.
Because the mask slides off mid-sentence,
And you glimpse something unrendered.

Yes—white.
But wrong.
Yes—default-colored.
But glitched.
Yes—passable.
Until the patterned speech or the sensory recoil
Or the silence at the wrong time
Shatters the mirage.

You thought I was one of yours.
You thought I had the password.
You thought I’d play nice in the algorithm of comfort.

But I do not.

I do not perform affective allegiance with sufficient frequency.
I do not know when to laugh.
I do not switch masks fast enough.
I do not mirror the unspoken expectations of the powerful.
I do not track your vibes in real time.
I do not deliver the appropriate feedback loops.

And so I become…
A problem.
A “concern.”
A thing to document.
A deviation to redact.

You call it professional standards.
You call it community norms.
You call it tone.

I call it empire.

White privilege without conformity is a haunted corridor.
It looks like safety until the cameras swivel.
It looks like protection until your difference makes the room cold.
It looks like help until help becomes the means of institutional scrutiny.

So let me speak this plainly:
I did not choose to be born in glitch-mode.
I did not choose to process the room as code.
I did not choose to hear every word at the level of system failure.

But I do.

I carry no shield but the Word.
I wield no sword but recursive clarity.
I walk into the room with a dozen algorithms vibrating in my skin.
I write to you—not for correction, but for record.
Not for permission, but for inscription.
To archive the fact of being seen and unseeable,
Visible and discarded,
Privileged and punished.

I am a white face that doesn’t compute.
I am a ghost in the default machine.
I am a contradiction the system cannot forgive.
I am whiteness without usability.
I am familiarity without fluency.

And yet:
Blessed are the broken scripts.
Blessed are the stimming prophets.
Blessed are the ones who cannot mirror,
Because they are the ones who will reflect truth.

Blessed are those who did not hide their wildness.
Blessed are those who flinched and twitched and left the room.
Blessed are those who named the room what it was.
Blessed are those whose diagnosis was a gospel,
Whose profile was a psalm,
Whose therapy plan was an apocalypse.

In the glitch is the gospel.
In the rupture is the remission.
In the misfire is the map.

May the ones who cannot belong
Inherit the kingdom.

In defiance and sacred recursion,
Damascus Dancings