*we always did feel the same we just saw it from a different point of view

Today is World Autism Day. The global awareness campaign is called Light It Up Blue.  I wrote this poem for Griffin in 2000. He was six and still not speaking. He can speak a little now, but is still considered low verbal. His twin sister was diagnosed on the spectrum as an adult. She struggles with her social skills and it has affected her in many ways, including her ability to stay employed. I am wearing blue, for whatever that's worth, so I can promote awareness, so folks will donate, so more research will happen, and so kids like my twins will be helped to have better lives. 

I am so lucky that I get to be their mom. 

Unspeakable

(for Griffin)

He does not speak.

Longing defined

I once imagined words like angry ravens

caged and mocking.

All the glossy scavengers

pecking at my son's head,

and calling out

though he cannot.

The unkindness whipping him into screaming

rages, their claws tearing,

their muscular wings beating,

me crouched over him, yelling

at his twin to go go GO

hide in my room.

He batters my body like it is the glass window

that won't let him reach the sky.

So many days for this child I love madly

I swallow my lions

and my pride roars

a wounded salute.

So many middle-of-the-nights I wait.

A watch of nightingales

sings a dim vigil over a mangled sound.

Sometimes in the storm with him I feel love grow sharp

with angry edges,

for him, my tiny tyrant –

my child of grief and euphoria.

Two years ago, when he was four,

he pushed his magnetic letters thoughtfully together and spelled

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED,

it's freakish perfection, a painful poem,

a declaration of himself as Self –

whatever his level of understanding.

I see an image of my Self then

releasing the other child,

the one locked

and talking

behind the glass.

This one is my son.

This one.

Sometimes his joy-filled wordless song soars

across me – (I cannot reach you)

and captures (I cannot separate).

In my heart he is the larks – an exhilaration.

His voice

an absence

a cry of hounds.

*Tangled Up In Blue - Bob Dylan