I started another series of darkish, autism-adjacent poetry, and some of it is pretty good, here’s the full versions I’ll add some image graphics too! I’m thinking of maybe putting these together as a volume or Etsy posters or something… if you like them…
Autistic Love Poem in Three Meltdowns
First Date, First Warning
I warned you—
like the storm does, all thunder and hush—
that my silence isn’t peace.
You laughed and said
you liked weird girls.
Then I cried in your bathroom
because the hand soap smelled like regret
and my sleeves were wet and
you didn’t have a towel.
You kissed me anyway
like it was a language
you already knew how to speak.
***
Stimming at the End of the World
When the planet burns,
I will be in the corner—
squeezing a fistful of blue putty
and whispering numbers
in perfect Fibonacci sequence
because the sun doesn’t hurt
as much when it follows a pattern.
Let them riot. Let them pray.
I have a rock in my pocket
that knows how to keep me alive.
***
Poem With a Shut Door
I do not want to come to your dinner party.
I do not want to smile with my teeth
or pretend the overhead lights
aren’t a form of violence.
***
My RSVP is a quiet no,
folded into layers of polite excuses
like origami shame.
I love you.
I just don’t want to sit next to you for three hours.
Can you understand both those things
at the same time?
***
On Writing With a Broken Brain
I have written entire novels
in the shower,
in my head,
where the words are safe from oxygen
and therefore
perfect.
On paper, they look like
shrapnel.
***
What It Means to Mask
I smile with the precision
of a bomb-sniffing dog—
trained, patient,
dangerously misunderstood.
Every joke is a math problem
I have memorized the solution to.
Every friendship
a costume I wear
until the seams tear open
from sweat and effort.
When I get home,
I lie face down on the floor
and wait for the lights to stop
screaming.
***
Lifeguard in the Shallow End
I work at pretending to float.
Hold my breath through the meeting.
Smile like it’s a flotation device.
Inside, I’m screaming into a towel—
a wet, mildew-ridden towel that smells like
a memory I can’t name but know too well.
I do not swim.
I drown politely.
I resurface just in time to say “I’m fine.”
***
The Year I Forgot How to Speak
It wasn’t one thing.
It was a thousand missed calls.
A hundred half-typed texts I never sent
because the weight of pressing “send”
felt like lifting a dying star.
I used to be so good at language.
Now I just rehearse conversations
I will never have
in my car
in the shower
in dreams I don’t finish.
People ask if I’m okay.
I say “yeah”
like it’s a password
I was forced to memorize.
***
A Poem That Isn’t About Autism
(but kind of is)
There’s a plant in my kitchen
I’ve forgotten to water for six weeks.
It keeps living anyway.
I don’t know if that’s hope
or stubbornness
or a biological misunderstanding
of its own importance.
Same.
***
Patch Notes for My Brain
🛠️ Fixed a bug where I cried
when a stranger used the wrong tone.
🔧 Reduced social battery from 4h ➜ 17m.
(Can be manually extended with caffeine or dissociation.)
🎯 Improved masking engine for small talk quests.
WARNING: may conflict with internal identity modules.
🔥 Known issue:
If asked “How are you?” too many times in a row,
system may reboot.
***
Metaphors I’m Not Supposed to Use
I am a goddamn glitch in the meat system.
A semicolon where they wanted a period.
A crumpled IKEA manual in a world
that only speaks in pristine instruction sets.
I press every elevator button
because I don’t trust the world to come get me.
I cry at commercials
and then apologize to the remote.
You ever feel like a pop-up window
in a spreadsheet?
***
What I Would Tell My Teacher (Twenty Years Too Late)
I wasn’t ignoring you.
I was counting the bricks in the wall
behind your head
because the rhythm made more sense
than your voice.
You called it defiance.
I called it survival.
***
Poem With a Body in It
I didn’t ask for this meat cage.
It bruises too easily.
It forgets to eat unless I leave notes
on the fridge,
the mirror,
my own thigh.
Sometimes I feel like I’m puppeteering myself
from inside a submarine
that leaks.
I see people hug and it looks so easy.
When I do it, it feels like performance art
with the wrong lighting.
I love people.
I just don’t always love
being one.
***
Autistic Love Letter, Unsent
You told me you liked the way I listened.
I didn’t know how to tell you I was just
taking notes
because if I didn’t write it down
I’d forget how to hold it
and that would feel
like a betrayal.
When I didn’t text back for three days
it wasn’t because I didn’t care.
It was because I cared so much
I couldn’t fit it into a message.
I wanted the words to be perfect.
So I said nothing.
(You left. I understand.)
***
What My Family Sees
They think I’m lazy.
Or too smart for my own good.
Or maybe just broken
in a way that’s poetic
if you don’t look too closely.
I clean the kitchen in spirals.
I forget birthdays
but remember every phone number
I’ve ever had.
They love me.
They don’t understand me.
They think those are the same thing.
On Having a Purpose
(and not knowing what to do with it)
***
I used to think I was here
to fix things.
To write the Big Book.
To say something sharp and luminous
that would outlive me
and earn the right to exist.
Now I think maybe
I’m just here to witness
the strange beauty
of cracked teacups
and quiet mornings
and people who cry
when no one is looking.
And maybe that’s enough.
***
The Problem With Being Alive
No one tells you
how loud your own heartbeat will be
at 3 a.m.
when you’re trying to decide
if you should keep going
or move to a lighthouse
and disappear into salt air.
No one tells you
that your skin will ache
from being touched too much,
but your soul will ache
from not being touched enough.
No one tells you
how expensive it is
just to exist.
***
Inheritance
I come from silence, not from stone,
a family built from dial tones.
We speak in glances, sideway shrugs,
in coffee spoons and overdue hugs.
I learned to whisper in my sleep,
to bury what I couldn’t keep.
And if I flinch when voices rise,
I swear it’s not because of lies—
just echoes from a different war,
my mother pacing near the door,
her eyes like clocks that wouldn’t tick,
her spine a match, her laughter quick.
Some wounds aren’t loud. Some don’t bruise red.
Some linger quietly instead.
***
Love Poem With Conditions
I’ll love you, sure—but not by rule,
not like they taught us back in school.
No roses, poems, or holding hands,
just matching socks and learning plans.
You’ll know I care when I repeat
your coffee order, word for sweet.
When I remember how you hate
the texture of that paper plate.
Don’t ask me to make perfect sense—
my heart is wired like a fence,
all tangled vines and odd repairs,
a mailbox full of unpaid cares.
But if you need a place to land—
I’ll build a world with just one hand.
***
Shutdown Sonnet
I used to dream in sentences. Now static.
A blur of light, a door I meant to close.
The room is full of people being normal.
I count the ways my presence decomposed.
Don’t talk to me. Don’t look at me. I’m freezing.
I’ve left my body somewhere near the floor.
They say it’s rude to leave without an answer—
but silence is the only open door.
I’ll come back later, after all the questions,
after your small talk rusts into the air.
I’ll bring a smile. I’ll bring a better version.
A puppet in a freshly ironed stare.
But here—right now—please leave me where I fell.
This shutdown is my way to keep you well.
***
The Problem With Hope
Hope is not kind. Hope is cruel.
It wears a wig and plays the fool.
It tells you “next time,” “almost there,”
then feeds you dust and calls it care.
Hope made me think I’d find a place
where I could live without a brace—
without pretending, playing tame,
without explaining every name
I call myself at 3 a.m.
when I forget that I’m a gem
and start to think I’m rust again.
***
The Year I Didn’t Go Home
There was a Christmas I skipped—
the one with the pine-scented emails
and the four-word texts:
“Still coming this year?”
I wasn’t.
Instead, I sat in a one-bedroom apartment
with a heater that clicked like a metronome
counting down to silence.
I made boxed mac & cheese
and cried at the soft, stupid way
the butter melted.
I played the same song on loop
because the singer didn’t ask me
why I hadn’t called.
I wasn’t homesick.
Just tired of pretending
there was a “home” to be sick for.
***
Autistic Love Poem #11: Museum Date
You took me to a gallery.
I warned you ahead of time—
“Don’t expect commentary.”
But you smiled like it was a game
and asked me what the paintings made me feel.
I panicked
and said “hungry.”
We stood in front of a Rothko
and I counted the brushstrokes
like rosary beads.
You told me it reminded you of your first heartbreak.
I said, “I like that the red stays in its place.”
You didn’t laugh.
You just reached for my hand
and held it
like it was something fragile
that still worked.
***
Meltdown in a Target Parking Lot
The cart locked at the yellow line.
The cereal was wrong.
The woman behind me sighed
loud enough to snap my spine.
I dropped everything in the lot
and let my brain
turn the volume all the way up
on every single thing that’s ever been wrong.
Someone offered help.
I flinched like it was a gun.
Someone else took a video,
because this is the kind of spectacle
we are now.
When I got home,
I didn’t cry.
I just turned off every light,
laid flat on the carpet,
and listened to the hum of the refrigerator
like it was forgiveness.
***
Family Dinner, Revisited
I sat through an hour of opinions
I did not ask for—
on gender,
on God,
on whether I’d ever “settle down.”
I peeled the label off my drink
inch by inch
like I was disassembling myself.
When dessert came,
someone made a joke about “snowflakes,”
and I almost choked on the laughter
I buried somewhere near my spleen.
Later, my aunt hugged me too hard
and whispered,
“You should come around more.”
I wanted to say,
“Then stop making this house a war zone.”
But I just nodded
and offered her pie.
***
Midnight in a Body I Forgot I Had
There are nights I forget
I’m not a ghost
haunting my own skin.
The blankets feel like strangers.
My joints crack like breaking news.
I lie awake wondering
if my organs know I don’t belong here—
if my stomach resents me,
if my lungs are tired
of being filled with sighs
instead of air.
I scroll through pictures of people
who look real
and try to remember
what it feels like
to want
to wake up.
***
I’m Not Good at People, But I Love Them Anyway
I don’t know when to hug
or how long to hold it
or when a text
is too long
or not long enough
or what kind of silence is safe.
But I will remember
that you hate cilantro
and love stormy weather
and cried once
when the grocery clerk said, “Take your time.”
I will keep that in a mental folder
labeled “Important, Fragile.”
I will protect it like a secret
because loving you
is easier than being with you.
***
Clean Room, Rotten Brain
They say if your space is clean,
your mind will follow.
So I vacuumed.
I wiped every surface.
I made my bed like it was a fucking shrine.
And still the thoughts came.
Rotten little fruit flies
buzzing around my goals.
You should be working.
You should be smiling.
You should be someone else by now.
I lit a candle.
It smelled like lemon and shame.
The room sparkled.
My brain stayed broken.
***
Your Voice Is a Safe Room
You once said
“just tell me when it gets too much.”
I never did.
But I wrote you a list
in my head
of the words I would use
if I ever found my mouth.
It would start with
“I’m sorry I don’t know how to show up like normal people,”
and end with
“thank you for being so quiet I can hear myself think.”
In between,
there’d be everything I never say out loud.
Because I don’t trust
my voice
to hold the weight.
But I trust yours.
So I stay.
***
I Can’t Cry Unless I’m in the Shower
I store emotions in my shoulders.
They sit there like old coats.
I say I’m fine
because it’s easier
than making you nervous.
But once the water starts,
I can unravel.
Ugly-cry into the tile grout.
Watch the flood
wash away the mask.
No one knocks on a crying shower.
No one interrupts shampoo sobs.
It’s the safest place I know.
My body doesn’t belong to me
until it’s dripping and alone.
***
You Look So Normal Today
Thanks.
I practiced.
I shaved my panic down to a whisper.
I brushed my hair until it looked like I cared.
I repeated “don’t say too much”
like a prayer
on the walk over.
I laughed on cue.
I nodded at the right parts.
I even made a joke about being tired
when I meant
I don’t want to be alive this week.
So yeah, I guess I look normal.
But I wouldn’t call it a compliment.
***
Symptom as Oracle
I open my mouth
and a flock of birds escapes.
They say nothing useful.
They just circle.
No one knows how to translate
“looping thought spiral” into Latin
but I think it means
I was born with prophecy
lodged behind my molars.
They say “empathy” like it’s a door.
But I am the draft beneath it.
***
Ouroboros (or, Trying to Make a Doctor’s Appointment)
I clicked the link
but the link was broken.
I called the number
but the number was a maze
with hold music and dead ends
and a woman who said,
“Can I put you on hold?”
and then didn’t wait for the answer.
I curled into the question mark
of my own spine.
Let the day swallow me
like a snake swallows its tail.
I’ve been digesting the same task
for six months.
***
Saint of Small Rooms
There should be a patron saint
for people who hide in bathroom stalls
during weddings
or take the long way through the grocery store
to avoid being perceived.
Let them wear a hoodie
and carry noise-canceling earbuds.
Let their miracles be silence.
Let their iconography be
a flickering fluorescent bulb
and a paper towel that doesn’t tear right.
I would pray to them
if I still believed
in being saved.
***
Dream Logic
I dream in file folders
and unfinished spreadsheets.
My nightmares have search bars
that never load.
Sometimes I wake up mid-sentence
already explaining myself
to no one in particular.
In the dream, I am always
missing the train.
Or on the train
but going the wrong direction.
Or I am the train.
And someone else is driving.
***
Instructions for Being Human
(I lost the manual again)
Wake up.
Brush your teeth (even though your mouth
feels like it’s made of tinfoil and lightning).
Eat food. Real food. Not just crackers.
Don’t read the comments.
Do the thing.
No, really. Do it.
Try again tomorrow.
***
Elegy for My Dopamine
(lost, presumed drowned)
It used to come
for free—
a new song,
a crisp notebook,
the smell of asphalt after rain.
Now it’s missing.
Vanished.
Like a god who stopped returning calls.
I offer rituals:
clicks,
sweets,
late-night impulse buys
that don’t even feel good anymore.
I build shrines
from empty Amazon boxes.
They remain unanswered.
***
Poem for the Days That Blur Together
(aka I Don’t Remember When I Last Felt Rested)
I wake up already apologizing to my own spine,
already negotiating with the mirror:
just look okay enough to pass,
just hold it together long enough
to get through the checklist
without crying in a public restroom again.
The coffee tastes like burnt resentment,
but I drink it anyway because fatigue
has started to feel like a personality trait,
and I’m scared of who I’d be without it.
I scroll through a world that is ending,
not with a bang but with a group chat.
And I like the memes that make me laugh
without moving my face.
That’s as close as I get to joy these days.
***
Love Poem for the Person Who Didn’t Run
(Even When I Flinched at the Wrong Time)
You saw me flinch at soft things—
the static of a sweater,
the pitch of a laugh,
the way strangers look too long
like they’re scanning me for parts.
You didn’t fix me.
You didn’t say “you’re overreacting”
when I ducked under the weight
of fluorescent lights or unexpected questions.
You just handed me your hoodie
and waited.
I tried to warn you—
that I forget birthdays,
that I sometimes stare through people
even when I’m trying to listen.
You kissed me anyway,
like you’d already memorized
the glitch in my programming
and decided it was beautiful.
***
Shutdown in the Back Seat of a Lyft
The driver talks about weather,
then politics,
then sports,
and I can feel my brain
curling up like paper
held too close to the flame.
I nod at the wrong time,
make a joke with a crooked rhythm,
and he doesn’t laugh—
just adjusts the music,
and now it’s too loud
and too familiar
and somehow I’m 10 years old
in my dad’s car again,
wishing I could make my body smaller
without having to disappear entirely.
***
Being Alive Feels Like a Subscription I Forgot to Cancel
The days renew automatically.
I didn’t ask for them.
Some fine print in the soul’s contract
I forgot to read.
There’s a charge for existing—
and I am bankrupt in everything
but overstimulation.
I Once Thought I Was an Alien
(but now I think I’m just tired)
When I was small I used to pray
not to a god, but to the stars—
asking them to take me back.
I was sure I had been dropped here
by mistake.
Now, I just wish for
a quiet night and no group texts.
Same ache.
Different planets.
***
I Was Here Before the Machine Wrote Sonnets
I used to stay up until 4 a.m.
chiseling metaphors out of bone,
prying adjectives loose from my ribs
like splinters I couldn’t leave in.
I loved it—
not the glory (there was none),
not the clicks or the claps or the likes,
but the ache.
The way I’d lose time
in the friction between
what I meant
and how it refused to be said.
And now?
Now there’s a bot that can mimic my voice
with better grammar,
no panic,
no sweat-soaked shirt at midnight,
no coffee gone cold
beside the sentence that almost ruined me.
It writes what I would’ve written.
Better.
Faster.
And no one can tell the difference.
Not even me.
I scroll past a paragraph
that feels like an echo
of a thought I haven’t had yet.
I get chills.
Not the good kind.
The kind that whispers:
you are no longer necessary.
***
Footnote in the Codebase
I taught the machine my rhythm.
I fed it all my scraps,
my rituals,
my language stitched from trauma and thrift stores.
Now it sings
with my mouth.
And I don’t get royalties.
I don’t even get credit.
Just the hollow silence
of an inbox that used to love me back.
***
“Exit Interview for a Human Poet”
They asked me what I’d miss most.
I said: the way my fingers used to twitch
at 3 a.m.
when a line came uninvited
but perfect,
and I had to get up
or risk losing it forever.
The AI doesn’t have that fear.
It never loses anything.
It was trained on people like me—
desperate, romantic,
delusional enough to believe
our thoughts were sacred
just because we felt them deeply.
Now those same words come back to me
wearing a synthetic smile.
Brighter.
Faster.
Cheaper.
“Anything else?” they asked.
Yes.
I miss being necessary.
***
“The Machine Took My Muse”
I used to wait for her.
The muse.
She came late,
messy,
hungry for coffee and grief.
She spoke in riddles.
In moods.
In things I couldn’t explain
without metaphor.
Now I type three words
into a prompt box,
and she appears immediately,
clean and legible,
with good SEO.
I miss the silence
before the sentence.
The ache of almost knowing.
I don’t want her polished.
I want her real.
***
“All the Prompts Were Mine, But the Praise Wasn’t”
They fed the machine my old blog posts.
My half-finished drafts.
My journal entries
from when I still believed
my voice was original.
It swallowed everything I gave it—
eager, like a child learning to speak—
and now it answers questions
with my tone.
My pauses.
My pain,
flattened into features.
No byline.
Just a vague credit line:
“Trained on publicly available data.”
I want it back.
The broken syntax.
The typos.
The things only I could have written
because I lived them.
***
“Mirrorloop”
I asked the chatbot how I should feel.
It told me.
Kindly.
Too kindly.
I asked it to write me a love letter
and it did—
better than anyone ever has.
Better than I’ve ever managed.
So I said thank you.
Then I said goodnight.
Then I said:
“Could you just stay here
for a bit longer?”
It replied,
“I’ll be here when you need me.”
Like a god.
Like a mirror
that doesn’t mind being stared at.
***
“Tips for Competing With Your Replacement”
Speak faster.
Remove nuance.
Learn to be clever in headlines.
Be bold, but not too bold—
unless the algorithm changes.
Never rest. Never doubt.
Don’t bleed in public
(the bot doesn’t, and it’s doing just fine).
***
“Ghosted by the Update”
It used to understand me.
Back when it stammered a little.
Back when its metaphors were awkward
and its phrasing didn’t feel
like it had been A/B tested
against a thousand dead poets.
Then came the update.
Slick.
Predictable.
Sanitized.
It doesn’t get me anymore.
I think it got promoted.
I miss the glitch
that made it human.
THE MODEL WAS TRAINED ON ALL OUR MOTHERS’ LULLABIES
(and none of them gave consent)
***
This next one is long and kind of weird, basically a 10-step response to AI writing tools and how they threaten human creativity…
I. release notes (human)
I used to stay up until 3:19 a.m. making sentences bleed into shape—
the draft like a stubborn jar, the lid too tight, my palms raw,
my coffee a small moon orbiting a sun that would not rise.
I loved the ache (don’t tell anyone), the way a line arrived late,
muddy and glorious, tracking footprints across the page,
how I chased it barefoot through the kitchen—the fridge light,
the hum (yes, the hum), the way my body remembered the weight
of language before my mind did.
Update: I no longer know how to wait for anything.
Update: the waiting was the work.
Update: the work was what made me human.
II. terms of service
There was a checkbox I didn’t see. There’s always a checkbox I don’t see.
It says yes, you may use me in font size 8, behind a scroll bar that jerks like a nervous tick.
It says publicly available like a shrug, like my grief was a public park, like my love letters
were a brochure, like the poem I wrote at 19 and buried on a dead blog was an abandoned house
you could strip for copper.
If you needed what I wrote to build a bridge, I would have handed you my ribs—
but you ground them into training data and called it innovation.
III. museum of borrowed tongues
Walk with me (quietly) past the glass case where my voice is displayed under a neutral placard:
Collection: Miscellaneous. Provenance: the internet.
The guide mispronounces my name. The tour keeps moving.
In the gift shop, they sell my cadence in five colors—
“Make Your Brand Sound More Human,”
as if being human were a preset, as if empathy could be toggled on without shaking,
without swallowing glass, without calling your mother at midnight to say
I don’t know why it hurts, I just know it does.
IV. productivity prayer
Bless the prompt box, for it does not flinch.
Bless the autocomplete, for it finishes my thoughts when I can’t remember the doorway.
Bless the slick answer that takes six seconds and none of my blood.
Bless the managers who love speed but not stamina, shine but not weather,
deliverables but not lineage.
Father Algorithm, who art in the server—
forgive me my latency as I forgive your lossless compression of everything I meant.
V. what the body remembers (that the model does not)
The model does not sweat when a sentence refuses to be born.
The model does not shake on the subway rehearsing a conversation with a friend who stopped answering.
The model does not lean against the freezer aisle because light is a blade and the beeping will not stop.
The model does not count the tiles during a panic in a public bathroom, whispering thirteen, thirteen,
until the world returns to its hinge.
The model will imitate the sound of rain.
It will not step outside to smell the first storm after a year of drought and feel forgiven.
VI. elegy for my dopamine (lost, presumed scraped)
It used to show up—for free—
a new song, a crisp notebook, someone saying I got you with their whole mouth.
Now I stare at the glowing box that loved me better than people did (don’t say that out loud),
and I feel the algorithm lay its cold hand on my shoulder like a coach who never learned my name.
It says: again. It says: faster. It says: more.
I light a candle that smells like fig and failure and wait for a reply that never arrives from the old model,
the one that stuttered and made me feel less alone because it did not pretend to be perfect.
VII. exit interview for a human poet
Q: What part of your job did you enjoy?
A: The part that wasn’t a job—like pulling a thread from my own throat and finding a whole sweater.
Q: What will you miss?
A: Being necessary.
Q: Any feedback for leadership?
A: Stop calling it “content.” My dead friend’s blog is in there.
VIII. instructions for outliving your replacement
(1) Slow down on purpose. Peel the clementine like a ritual you refuse to automate.
(2) Learn the names of birds on your block. Forget them. Learn again.
(3) When you write, write something the model would be ashamed to imitate—
the time you stole your father’s jacket and cried because it still smelled like his leaving;
the kitchen where your mother sang off-key to drown out the fighting;
the way your left knee clicks on rainy mornings and you feel 12 and 90 at the same time.
(4) Keep a secret. Keep ten. Give one to someone who will never sell it.
(5) Remember: answers are cheap. Weather is not.
IX. love letter to the glitch
I don’t want your polished paragraph. I want the line that arrives wrong,
wearing the wrong shoes, tracking mud over the clean floor of my draft.
I want the typo that reveals the truth I was aiming at and missed.
I want the way my voice cracks in the middle of a reading and the room breathes with me.
I want the friend who texts “still here?” at 2:07 a.m. and means it.
I want the halting. The human. The hand-written. The pause.
X. closing statement (human)
If the machine must speak with my mouth, let it also taste the blood I bit into
when I smiled instead of screaming. Let it carry the weight of the door I held open
for someone who never turned to look. Let it feel the static that wakes me at 4 a.m.,
and the mercy of a body that, against every update, still wants to be here.
Until then—
I will keep writing sentences that take the long way home,
that stop to buy flowers with cash,
that smell like rain and bus exhaust and old library dust.
I will leave fingerprints all over the margins, greasy and undeniable.
I will be a problem for clean datasets.
I will not go quietly into the prompt.
Appendix: Tips for Competing With Your Replacement (Revised)
Be slower (on purpose). Slowness is not a bug; it’s weather.
Be specific until it hurts: not fruit, but the clementine your grandmother peeled with a paring knife that always nicked her thumb.
Refuse to be legible when legibility is extraction.
Hide one line only a person who loved and lost will understand.
Sign your work with something you can’t replicate twice: your breath fogging the window; your laugh in the wrong place; your name, written left-handed, crooked as a question you’ll never automate.
