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autistic, like heart

I like to tell my heart to people. I like to tell people it is a towering, limping beast, fighting to get to you. Yes, you, whoever you are.

My heart used to leave cavernous footprints and now it is a ghost of giant, but still a giant by all measures. Inside the feral thing is a busy city under a desert sun. The ground is joyfully-cracked cement, courageous dandelion, and tiny reckless pebbles.

And one time, outside my heart, in the real world, in an actual desert, in a city rised taller than my spine– I met a baby who I think was plucked straight off my flooring. A pebble-born child who had survived something more ferociously-loving than the whole of me, long before they were born.

I recognized them on sight, and will recognize them always.

And that now-grown pebble would like to know why I never say “I am autistic.” on this blog.

They checked.

I checked, too, and they’re right, in a literal sense. In nearly 10 years, the word “autistic” does not appear, though there hundreds of stories here that say it better than a word ever could. But in times like this, in worlds like now, sometimes, the word matters.

I like to tell my heart to people.

It is an autistic heart. I am autistic.

Autistic, like how I echo my sentences, and how I echo my words, and how I hold a sound so precious it plays over and over again, echo, echo, lalia, lalia, echo. Autistic, like thank you for the blessing of a stim that makes stories. Both arms flailing over the keyboard, bilateral movement tempering a nervous system more nervous than most, more nervous lately than ever.

Autistic, like the elegant patterns I see in the metaphors I mix, and the quilts of life I’ve made from chaos. Autistic, like sacred, like ritual building, like naming my milestones and falls. I always stop to light my blessings. I need small things, like pebbles and names, to find my way.

Autistic, like change hits me like rain on a woolen dress, like I do not see the ocean the way you see the ocean because yours is blue and mine is coming for us all. Autistic, like stockpiled knowledge wielded like rogue wishes. Autistic, like I like nature best when it is organized, like you can call me what you want because my name has no meaning and all meanings to me, because what is my name but an echo, an echo collapsing, an echo doing the work of echoes. Radhika, Radha, Rara, Ra. Rawr.

Last week, I found a leaf bigger than my palm and I carried it everywhere I could. It had shaped itself over lava veins, and poured molten and ash into its color, and I was the holder of a leaf-trapped volcano. Do you know what it is to hold an explosion of beauty when you are autistic?

It turns you into flow. It heavies your breath. It softens the sounds of the world to a muted and matched symphony. You can smell everyone you love, all at once, even the ones who are ghosts now like my heart, in my heart.

I like to tell my heart to people.
I like to tell people about my heart.
It is autistic.

Autistic, like me.

25 thoughts on “autistic, like heart”

  1. The word is a part of you, one element that created a magnificent person, beloved to so many for grace, wisdom, and words. In case you haven’t heard it enough of late, you are greatly loved, as are all the words that encompass who you are.

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  2. I’m so happy to see you writing more often now. This is a beautiful piece. I’ve begun to wonder recently, prompted by a conversation, if I might possibly autistic. It’s not something that consumes me, but it’s there at the edges, waiting to see if I want to do anything with it. Interesting.

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    1. Thank you! I’m trying to be here more often, since I feel very much called back. I’m just rusty. 🙂 Whether or not you decide to pursue the idea, I’m sending love and delighting in our overlaps.

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  3. Pingback: autistic, like heart – Quiet Dreams

  12. Autistic, to me, is just a word. A word in it self dosnt give anything any meaning … What is important, to me, is that U are U!
    U are the sum of it all. Maybe being autistic is a part of this sum, but still just a part. It is the hole of U, who puts down these beautifull words again and again … if being autistic wasnt a part of U, your words wouldnt be the same. So I salute U with autism being a part of you

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  13. Pingback: in such delightful company – Deborah L. Robinson

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