Disability Reform

Disability Reform 

They come in suits,

hands clean,

tongues heavy with “reform.”

They do not see the tremor

of a mother’s hand

as she opens the brown envelope.

They do not hear

the silence

after a child is told:

you are too expensive

to educate past nineteen.

This is not care.

This is arithmetic.

This is a ledger

where names are numbers,

needs are noise,

and dignity is

a column to be deleted.

They talk of fairness

while snipping the threads

that held us together—

threads spun from routine,

from rights,

from the quiet heroism

of just getting through the day.

First, they came for the benefits.

Then, the rights.

Now, they come for the story itself—

rewriting it so the disabled child

becomes a burden,

the parent a problem,

and the state

a benevolent blade.

A child must ask permission to move,

to learn,

to breathe freely in a school

where they might be safe.

And what is that,

if not control?

What is that,

if not a polite word

for a polished cage?

They call this compassion.

I call it cruelty in costume.

They call this progress.

I call it punishment with paperwork.

They call it reform.

I call it

a quiet war on worth.

Austerity wears a new dress now.

It smiles on the news.

But behind the glass:

a boy sits by the window,

too old for help,

too young to fall through the cracks.

And he will.

Where is the outcry?

This is not support.

It is surveillance.

This is not protection.

It is pruning.

And you do not empower

by cutting away limbs

that carried the weight

no one else would lift.

Ask yourself, MP:

If this were your child—

their voice small,

their future shrinking

at the hands of a minister’s pen—

would you still vote “aye”?

Would you still smile for the photo

with the party line

pressed like a flower

between your teeth?

History will not forget

who crossed the floor—

but it will not forgive

who looked away. 

So speak.

Not as a politician,

but as a person.

Because justice begins

when silence ends.

With hope and urgency, 

Aspen Greenwood