sixth grade: i hid my monstersin the closetat the back of the trailerthat was our classroom it had once been a bathroom,when the trailer had once been a home,but now it was a storage areafilled with stacks of papersand booksand the sort of office suppliesthat only teachers kept i was wedged in that closethiding from…
Category: Poetry
Sarcophagus / Cocoon
the woman who was the motherto the son i used to beis now a shellfilled with venom and bile her ancient skin is a sarcophagusmine is a cocoonhousing a frightened butterfly and i cannot stay mooredto her millstonefor i am to take flightand fly away 03.30.24
enough about me
but enough about melet’s talk about youlet’s talk about how you’ve shaped an image of me out of clay and mud and the pieces of last night’s dinner and a memory you had a long time ago about a person i’ve never even metlet’s talk about how once upon a time you were hurt by…
at the end
at the end of the path,at the end of the road,i am not autistic,i am not transgender,i am not disabled,i am just me,the me i have always been,hidden deep within the cocoon of me 04.28.23
yeah, eff that noise
i’ve come to a conclusion about my mental healthbut i’ll get back to that prologue:when i was youngi remember people talking about autismas if it were pitiable, contagious, debilitating spoken of in hushed tonesdid you hear about margaret?her son is…the word is barely audible by the time i saw rain manthe concept had become cemented…
ophelia sleeps
my skull is hollowas if i could crawl inside of itfold my whole body into itself i’m looking aroundfor a hint of emotionsof colorof love or rageof red or green or yellowbut there is nothing just an expansive voidsand on the oceansideeroding away underthe wave’s caress i want to be presenthere in the nowbut there…
some days
some dayswords flow from my fingertipslike a mighty riverslide from my lipsin a deafening torrentof insighta logorrheic overflowspread out on the pagein the aira feast for the ear and the eye other days…not so much 04.25.23
interlude 2
i had finally found my wayto the center of the labyrinth there was no minotaur hereno pile of bonesno evidence of the violencethat fill the ancient tales the only sound was quietthe steady rhythm of my own breathing it was a circular roomwith one entranceso with one exit nondescript white wallsplain and unassuming in the…
hanging on the telephone
when i was a childmy father gave me a broken telephone i took it apartunscrewed it as far as i couldleft it as a pile of piecesa metallic jigsaw puzzle i had no goal, no purpose in this dissectioni wasn’t trying to figure out how it workedi just wanted to see its innardslaid out before…
a plate of shrimp
last night i had a dream where i was trying to take a showerthat wasn’t the whole dream of coursei was in chicago with my (dream) girlfriend for some sort of conferencethere were students there tooand other teachers it was the last morning of the conferencesunday morningtime to get ready to go homemy girlfriend had…