Loving you was like I jumped on a train at the last second; the doors sliding behind me and I almost missed it, the carriage that held you. As I took a seat I noticed you there, sat reading a book, holding a sweet smile across rose tinted cheeks, the glasses you wear hanging tightly atop your nose. I never want to leave. I stop, start staring like an idiot and its obvious how I feel, but you haven’t noticed my existence. The book is written by someone who stole your heart and even though I hope you finish it before my stop I know you can’t. I just wish you’d have looked up. Just once, at me. I wish you’d have seen what I’d seen looking at you one last time as I stepped off the carriage and onto a platform that lead somewhere you would never know. Somewhere we would never be.

Back in my teenage college years
I was told about “Autistic kids”
Who lived in worlds of their own,
Seeing things through weird and wonderful specs
In social isolation,
Frightening in its completeness.

At sixty six I since have learned about many
Of their “traits”:
Their obsessions, inflexible routines and
Panic
At all change.
Their inability to read
Emotions or social cues
Or innuendos
Or irony.

I have worked with those with Aspergers,
Colleagues, friends and clients –
Indeed with people all over
The Autistic Spectrum.

And the main thing I have learned
In all these years
Is that in my own way…
I am one of them.

Paul Butters

© PB 1\10\2018.