Stop asking for medical advice on Facebook,
Your superglue stitches and peroxide mismanagement
Will cost you more than a doctor's visit.
Stop asking for medical advice on Facebook
If you want to keep your limb.
I've found more competence on the "interweb."
Stop asking for medical advice on Facebook.
An oxygen embolism and cellulitis will
Have you putting out more than the Urgent Care.
Please, stop asking for medical advice on Facebook!
-Sincerely,
The EMT student who is constantly preventing disaster
For people with minor injuries who think 50's era first aid advice
Is a suitable alternative.

My mom always tell me that the doctors
Took heroic efforts to save my life,
That they went above and beyond the call of duty,
That if they hadn't thought me too
"Smart" and "beautiful" and "having the whole world going for me,"
I would be dead.
Number one: No one's chance of survival should depend on
Their looks, their opportunities, their cognitive ability.
Number two: None of it should've been necessary.
My text messages in the evening hours of 2/12/19
Are filled with the likes of "I don't feel safe,"
"I hate myself,"
"I am suicidal."
Their responses were simply,
"Do the best you can" and "Talk to the RA."
Yet they were surprised when 1 AM on 2/13/19
Found me in a hospital bed undergoing resuscitation.
Still,
When I woke up 10 days later,
They all wanted to know, "Why didn't you tell anybody?"

Sometimes I hope that someone might notice my difference,
Might intuit that the first approach,
The handshake, the "Can I join you?"
Is simply more difficult
And make the first move.
Sometimes I hope that people will realize the hand motions,
Foot tapping, slight rock of the body or toes
Are not merely a restless fidget,
Not impatience, nor disrespect.
Sometimes I want to be invisible,
Normal,
Neurotypical,
To be just another human being,
But mostly I wish to be accepted,
Autistic, quirky, kind, creative,
ME.

I vote we change Content Warning
To Contact Warning.
Please keep your words off my emotions
And your knives out of my heart.

Poets are an interesting bunch,
All half mad at least.
I say I love poetry
When the words tear me up inside,
Stealing every breath.
I say it soothes me
Even as it burns me,
Begging to be released.
"We all know we're crazy," I say.
"But we choose this life
Because we can't live without the fever dreams
Or syllables controlling our every move."
The non-poet stares at me,
Uncomprehending.

The hardest thing to reconcile
Is that you genuinely believed you love me,
And I truly loved you.
Now, I confuse gentle touch for hostile
Because you were wonderfully gentle
Until you weren't,
Before returning to gentle again.
The hardest part to reconcile is how you could be "so in love,"
Yet in that moment,
You were only concerned for your pleasure.
With a love like that,
I would never need enemies.

They taught us to scream "fire!"
"Help!" Would elicit no response.
They told us to wedge keys in our fingers,
To never walk alone in the night.
They told us to watch out for strangers,
To avoid masked men in dark alleys.
No one ever told me to beware of the man in my own bed,
To shudder when he told me he loved me.
No one told me that I would freeze,
Limbs powerless to fight him off.
They did not tell me I would know him, trust him, love him
Until the moment I couldn't anymore.
You can keep your **** whistles,
Your fists with car keys and staining sprays.
You can keep your roofie nail polish and SOS phone apps.
None of it would have done me any good
As I lay there, clinging to bed sheets and teddy bear.