#autistic poetry
is an absolute bitch, jsyk.
in case you haven’t ever had the displeasure
of trying and failing to meet her,
because she’s always running late
except when she’s running early
and she’s always wearing someone’s stolen clothes.
(stolen, not borrowed. she never asks.)
in a crowd, she’s always moving, always talking,
as inescapable and incomprehensible
as the crush of bodies, the layers upon layers
of interrupted conversations.
she blends in, you see.
(by the by, the bitch also stole my concealer.)
his pronouns change along with his surroundings,
they’re schrödinger’s gender, determined
in the instant of observation. of course,
all this depends on your personal level
of situational awareness.
(what’s your passive perception again? hmm. interesting.)
they don’t like their name, and so they go by alex.
or lexie. or thyme. any trip to Starbucks
is an exercise in confusion. the barista tries,
bless their heart, but when they become he become she
in the space of a single espresso shot
how is a sharpie to keep up with the changes?
(side note: check out my kickstarter for nametag change history!)
she has no sympathy for your inability to keep up.
identity is a construct and names are a prison,
and what do you expect her to do about it?
it’s not the queen’s fault if you lose her in the shuffle,
she told you to watch carefully. look closely now:
closer, closer, closer–
(didn’t anybody ever tell you?
the closer you look, the less you see.)
it’s not like anxiety and I were strangers when the lockdown started,
when the world abruptly shrank to the size of my apartment.
no, we’re old friends, anxiety and I, although usually she comes and goes.
she’s like a cat, appearing and disappearing at her own leisure,
completely assured of her right to your undivided attention,
hissing and lashing out when cornered or the alarm goes off.
friends might be the wrong word. nemesi? frenemies? partners in panic?
whatever we are, we’ve been it a long, long, l o n g time.
she is a quiet constant, invisible in her familiarity,
a startling shocking lack when absent.
she purrs, and the tremors in my hands keep time.
the rapid pulse of my heart thrums back,
and the two become one
become the hum of thwarted adrenaline,
the rising pitch barely contained within my bones.
she and I are an unplanned symphony.
this orchestra has no conductor,
no rehearsals or curtain calls.
is it stretching the metaphor to say that she gets stage fright?
because she does. the stage lights leave her light-headed,
and she curls up around me, overwhelmed and burying inward,
sulking like a child and taking all the oxygen in the room with her.
I try to comfort her but she’s also stolen all the moisture from my mouth,
the sense from my syntax, my mouth a desert,
my mouth adessert, gummy gums too sticky to speak,
my stomach a dizzying and sympathetic storm, a roiling ache
that could be hunger, nausea, cramps, the yawning void of grief, the terror of a life unlived–
something too vast and powerful to name.
life is a pass/fail exam,
and I’m still passing
which is, I suppose,
something to celebrate.
somehow, someway
I gave the right answers
said the right things
just at the right times
somehow, someway
I held my seams together
duct tape and prayers
and a youtube diy tutorial
somehow, someway
I’ve managed to achieve
a semblance of normal
faked competence so well
that I continue to pass
even though no one
has ever bothered
to explain the grading.
