Feral Eyes and Stillness

Here’s a secret, from me to you.
Sometimes,
Something happens.
A conflict.
An argument.
A situation.
And it’s just too much.

There is a snap,
Like a rubber band that’s been
Stretched far, far,
Then suddenly released.

Everything goes quiet in my mind.
Silence fills me,
And a preturnatural stillness.
I feel feral,
Like a wild animal,
Brought into the house
For the very first time.
I look around me
A stranger to this place.

Now I see everything.
There are no soft edges.
Ordinary things
That I never focus on,
Are suddenly there,
Demanding to be seen,
Inventoried, catalogued,
As my eyes dart around.
The edge of a door frame.
The hardness of a bed post.
The picture on the wall.
The design of the blanket.
The boards that make up shelves,
And every single item on them.
The things I normally go by,
soft focused,
without really seeing,
Are suddenly and vividly
There,
Demanding to be seen.
And it’s all suddenly so foreign,
So alien.
Unknown.

And the silence,
and the stillness, grows.
I am not the me that you know.
I am the feral child,
The one who didn’t understand
Why humans are the way they are.
I want to run to the only thing that seems right to me,
The forest, trees, the night,
Or the comfort of a dog’s fur.

I used to smile when the band snapped,
Leaving me standing in silence,
A child on the autism spectrum,
But nobody knew that.
I hid it well.
I smiled.
It was my defense.
On reflex, I smiled.
It was my armor and shield.
And it was excused.
She’s shy, they said,
As I stood in deepening silence,
Unsure what was being said.
Words are hard
When everything is silent inside,
And I look out from feral eyes.

I don’t smile now.
I don’t need a defense.
I know I’m an Aspie,
On the spectrum,
And I’m glad of that.
It gives me gifts that you will never understand.

But sometimes
It leaves me Feral,
Staring, silent, at the night sky,
Hands sunk deep in dog fur.
The only things that make sense
In a world of hard edges.