I met him, a week short
of being a teen, his number one-three celebrated
on Labor Day that year

his father wanted him to understand
how the "A" word would impact his life
in a peopled world

I agreed, and soon
he explained tachyons, photons,
and other “on”s I can't recall, in my
twenty months as his "healer"

he needed no catcher in the rye
to keep him from falling off the cliff
for edges did not apply to him

not in his world of curved
space and time, quantum quarks, and
pleasing cosmic rhyme

when it came to the bend
in time when we were to say goodbye
he could not understand we would not
meet again, though he was leaving
city and state

for him, minutes, hours, days
were shapes and sounds I could not hear--no
I would never come near, seeing beyond
Newton's silly spheres

but he could escape
the gruesome grip of gravity
without blinking an eye

my final entry in his file,
was the "A" word he would need
fear: Adult, not Autistic