White Paper, Green Paper

White Paper, Green Paper

I am a line in a file
buried beneath a budget.
I am costed, calculated,
cut.

White paper: folded,
creased,
clinical as a waiting room
with no names.
Green paper:
like bile,
like envy,
like the colour of rot
on a form that says:
“work makes you worthy.”

I try—
God, I try—
to write against it.
To shout inside the silence
they've stapled across our mouths.
But they call it policy.
They call it "help."
They call it "getting people into work"
like we are just clutter
that needs repurposing.

We. Are. Not. Furniture.

PIP?
Going, going.
Access to Work?
Only if you walk on your knees
and thank them
for the privilege
of surviving.

I try to stop it.
I am trying.
But the fight has been rinsed
from so many hands
that once raised signs,
that once clutched one another.
I see them now—
tired palms,
turned inward.

And I feel
like the last breath
before the lungs give up.

They say:
“You are as good
as your disability.”

And I say:
I am my disability.
It is not a stain.
It is not a debt.
It is not a number
on a form you’ll shred.

It is the way I know the world.
The way I move through pain
with teeth,
with pen,
with proof.

This is the body they would
unrecognise.
This is the voice
they would blur out.

But I am still speaking.
Still resisting.
Still yours.

And paper—
even white paper—
burns.

With love and solidarity, 

Aspen Greenwood