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In those words, they handed me a key—
to armour I wore unknowingly.
A mask that locked me in from the world,
its weight a comfort, strangely unfurled.

I turned it over in my hand,
traced edges I couldn’t understand.
I saw its shape behind closed eyes,
but stayed where silence felt like disguise—
From those walls I could not rise.

But then—
a whisper flickered through the hush,
not one I knew, not one I’d trust.

To face the world just naked skin,
not knowing what I’d held within,
each emotion crashed like waves too wide
for fragile bones to hold inside.
Each sound, a storm.
Each gaze,
A question I could not reply

I reached for the safety I had known,
but the walls were gone—crumbled stone.
The cracks beneath my feet grew wide,
until the world began to slide.
Alone, exposed, and trembling bare,
even silence stung the air.

But then—
the whisper came again,
not from beyond,
but deep within.

A murmur my body remembered,
from before I had words.
It offered no comfort, no retreat,
only truth—
raw and complete.

And in its truth—
a safety transformed,
not hiding,
but simply being
I am flawed, lost in the depths,
Since I heard the silence beneath their steps.
Their map is lean—lines, signs and names,
Not seeing beyond the truth they claim.

Through their shortcuts, they place me in a cage,
A simple outline, they miss the weight behind the stage-
What’s soft, unseen, warped by age,
With complexity they cannot engage.

This map of mine holds space, nuance, weight,
Unmarked roads and altered states,
It charts the shifts of inner skies,
The truths that flicker in disguised eyes.
It honours detours, dwells in pause,
And bends around unspoken laws.

They see it, flawed, lost, estranged,
Too raw, too complex, too unarranged.
But their neat world cannot gauge the cost,
Of all the knowing they’ve lost

Let them follow lines well-laid,
Their scripted paths in safe charade.
But don’t hold me to your labels and limits,
Drawn from shortcuts and fleeting minutes.

Let me be, let me fly,
To map my uncharted sky
It’s a beautiful day,
A Saturday.
One of those effervescent Spring afternoons  that buzzes with sunny activity,
a neighborhoodly kind of
picture perfect blue sky kind of
everything’s gonna be okay kind of day.

I stare at it from the corner of the couch,
through the window at the lawns across the street from the corner of the couch
and look down at myself.
*****, covered in soil from head to toe.
So bright, too bright out there
through eyes that have been languishing overlong in the deep brown black of the underground,
behind masks and walls,
closed for fear of opening.

They dazzle now and squint,
watering at the light,
not watering,
crying, crying,
etching riverbeds upon my ***** face.
How long was I down there?
Dreaming awake and automatic,
watching her water the houseplants and
comfort the friends
and rock the child
while I shoveled earth over my living form
to protect this vulnerable animal,
to bury bury bury it.

The noise doesn’t reach me
there in my cocoon.
It threatens now to crack my fragile sanity; though madness I would greet as an old companion.
I reject the invitation beckoning me from somewhere deep inside,
push push push it down,
and wave to my neighbor through the window
as he mows his grass.

It’s a beautiful day,
A Saturday,
and my senses pulse with indignation against it.
Back to the dreaming
where I will wrap my mind in cotton
and try again tomorrow.
Sometimes my ADHD brain becomes overwhelmed and the effort of sensory processing exhausts me entirely.
Yusuf May 10
Let us stay a little while,
midst the light and bloodied bile,
let us see what we can see
with our deceiving eyes.

The mother feeds their child,
and the scorching sun rises.
The lakes glisten like stars
and the birds sing again.

They're playing soccer.
And talking.
And having fun.
With eachother.

The plants move and twist,
and the tide ebbs and flows.
The grass is emerald.

They invite you in.
It just isn't for you.
If only it was.

The sky is an ocean of blue.
The birds fly like scattered sand.
  
You start doing your homework.

You like it.
You love it.
It's great.

It's fun.
It's so, so fun!
So fun...
that tears run down.

Yet your eyes are hollow.
Your head is full of soot.
Why?
To answer your question,
An essay would be most apt,
I’ll route through the archives, sift through dusty drawers,
Plot the coordinates of where I have been and map out my thoughts.

But first I must know: what do you know?
Can you hold the depth, can you pause to reflect?

And in the moment, you hold my gaze,
The silence swelling,it’s  weight thick,
I am but a deer in the headlights,
Startled, still and blank,

So in answer to your question,
I’m fine.
Hope Apr 25
There are days
That are good.
The yelling
is minimal.
The food is eaten.
Arguments
are
but
a
spoonful
             and there is
                  very
                    little
                       crying.

Then there are
days like today.
When you
              yourself
                 don't feel too well.
                    the doctor gives two days
                      of sick leave.

At 4:30
My little autism
walks through
the door.
With smiles,
taking his clothes off
to jump in the pool.
            It only takes a second
            to change the
            whole atmosphere.
            The once smiles
            are now full of tears.
     and no matter what it is
I'm feeling that all gets bashed
against a wall.
Along with my
anxiety it's the splash back
        blue paint down the hall.
                         You see.
                          even as
                          an adult
                          I have
                          trouble.
                         Digesting
                         my own
                         emotions.
       He paces back and forth
       clenches his fingers.
        back
        and
        forth.
        Back
        and
        forth.
    How do I expect my young son
        with autism to tell
me what the root
issue of his tears stem from.
             I was ready to
smash my face
through bricks.
              The repetitive
              questioning,
              repetition of words
             can be a lot even
             for a nut such as myself.

But it's not about me
you,
or my fiance
hearing it all.
It's not even about the fly
crawling on my leg.
               It's about him
               everything has to be.
               Who else is going to
               turn the rain on
               at night for him to sleep?
               Who's going to rub
               his little back to soothe his
               blue nerves to be
               green again?
               And who will receive a
               freshly picked flower
               each afternoon?
                
                        Me.

He finally felt better
once he got the words
out of his belly.
Telling me what provoked
these extreme outbursts.
           I was so proud of him.
        
Now it's," look at that cute cloud."
"Hey, check out my shadow!"
a freshly
plucked
flower.
With autism,
a bipolar mommy
and the sun—

Getting ready
to
nap.
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