Autism in Stanzas
A day begins the way a day begins: alarm ignored, silk blocking light not blocked by other fabric. A day begins the way most days begin: late, a rush to wake and locate myself, a crumple to the floor on unsteady legs, frozen by the choices I give myself driven by obsession: too many clothes from which to choose, paralyzed as promised moments tick by. A day begins the way most days begin: drag a brush through blown-out hair meant to last all week because I cannot hold a blow dryer for very long, powder brushed over pale face that hasn’t seen sun in days—I stopped counting. A day begins the way a day begins: in best attempts gone untended, intentions unmoored because it isn’t possible to moor a boat made of papier-mâché.
A day becomes what a day becomes: pills before meals before other pills, timed and planned and counted, measured and measured again. A day becomes a series of decisions, guided and unguided, on good days measured and measured again, predictable and welcome, conversations scripted and mostly parsed. A bad day becomes a series of decisions, wholly unguided, unclear and unwelcome and unplanned, noise undeciphered and grating. A bad day becomes a series of decisions that become too much, like where to put one foot after the other, which direction to look, how many breaths I should take and whether or not it’s okay to touch the things I know I own. A day becomes paralysis, a stomach flipped inside out, a skin all wrong. A day becomes a pill after a pill, then another pill, a hideout in a room where I can’t find me, where I can leave my skin, maybe just for a moment.
A day becomes a night like other nights: my old skin, hanging in the back room, and I wander into the rooms, alone and uncaring. A night becomes a night: touch on new skin in all the right places, liquid food that soothes and burns the way I wish all things would burn. A night ends like all the other nights: pills followed by pills followed by dreams of other lives, of other mes with other skins and other days that become something else entirely that I will never know.