Young Writers Society

14. Dark night of a lonesome soul

Is this the way out? To fall into the darkness not knowing when the sun will return? If it will return? No, when. When the sun comes back. It will come back-it’s a matter of when, and if you will be alive to see it. You hope you will. You wonder if anyone will be there to watch the sunrise with you. But most likely you will be alone. You have always been alone, even when you were forced not to be.

Autistic loneliness is a paradox. You isolated yourself in second grade, doing your schoolwork on top of the recycling box in the corner instead of your desk. You think you’ve matured since then, have figured out the rules well enough to play, however badly. But you cannot be known, and any capacity you had to love, to give of yourself, is spent just trying to give yourself air. Like the flight attendants always say, put your own oxygen mask on before assisting others. But to the “normal” mind it looks selfish, like every day is an emergency, every conversation a minefield.

The world, it seems, is made for pairs. You want the “we” sometimes, to feel like there is someone else to live for, to be better for. But if you get that far, you’ll always be waiting for the lie to reveal itself-the text you weren’t meant to read, the raised voice condemning you for not doing enough, the locks closing on every door so you can’t get out. Is this what pretty people fear when they go on dating apps? Do neurotypicals on a coffee date take too long to order, trying to determine how each choice could be perceived by the would-be love interest?

Perhaps it is easier to express love when you are not constantly tired, when you can breathe. Perhaps if I fall long enough into the darkness, there will be another hand to hold and seeing them in the dawn will be exciting instead of terrifying. Perhaps if I do what feels right instead of what is expected, I will love myself, if no one else.

Lines-23

15. on unnecessary procedures of womanhood

i have never been out west
(and may never make it--my gadabout heart
strangled by anxious neurons commanding my muscles
to stay put, because we know what happens when we leave)
but i see the grand canyon every day on my forehead
(though it will never photograph quite as well)

it feels cataclysmic, not a story of gradual erosion
but a biblical flood, a sign of divine displeasure,
a reminder that the hourglass is only so big
and you don't know when that last grain will fall
but you are closer to that moment than you were
when your forehead was smooth
and you never even stopped to think
it might not always be that way

women's magazines sell retinol and serums
and toners and moisturizers and eye creams
and night creams and sunscreen and you try some
because that's what you're supposed to do, but you know
that they're all just umbrellas in the flood.

once the wrinkles have cut canyons, google says,
there's only one way to reclaim it. botox always sounded
like the sort of thing only rich and vain people needed,
and you're not particularly rich and you're too ugly for vanity,
but you wonder if it's time.

some might say thirty-two isn't that old
but your mother felt ancient on her wedding
day at thirty-three, and your grandmothers had long had
their babies, three apiece, and here you are, asking the portal
to all the world's knowledge if it's time to poison your face muscles
because you don't have anyone else to ask.

will i end up going to the dermatologist
the same way i go get my eyebrows separated once monthly?
(my mother's inexpert plucking had me at twelve years old
begging to get waxed, even as i didn't know why a unibrow
was so terrible)

or like how i get my hair colored at a fancy salon,
even though i mostly just sweep it into a lazy bun?
at least now i can get the purple underneath
that almost gave my mother a heart attack.

or will i make it to arizona, no makeup
in my travel bag, roots and brow growth ignored,
my forehead lines glistening in the sun
as they meet their ancestor?

15. On art and aging

Perhaps I want Botox
Because I want my face unwound,
frozen in an era where I still believed, if not in any gods, at least in myself. Before the rivers of perpetual anxiety carved
valleys into my forehead, an extra curse from Jupiter on a face that Venus never blessed.

Before I found myself 32 on paper but still stuck in the mind that froze at 20, when someone said no one wants to be with me and then he got to live with his bride while I got to not-die alone, his words an invisible weight in every social interaction since.

At the art museum I studied the texture of Van Gogh’s brushstrokes and fought the urge to touch them. And yet I hate my own reflection for not being an empty canvas, for having screamed and laughed and cried at the world.