These Are My Words of Pain
These words are my words of pain.
Not polished,
not approved by a committee of smiles.
They come limping in,
bleeding through the mouth,
asking for a chair and a drink
and not much else.
The rage is real.
It isn’t poetic rage,
not the kind that sells books
or makes professors nod.
It’s red—
brick-red, artery-red,
the color you see when the door slams
and no one comes back to open it.
I learned it young.
Too young.
A child already marked
for being different,
for not laughing on cue,
for hearing the world too loudly
and trusting it too much.
You called it discipline.
You called it normal.
You called it care.
But your care had fists in its pockets
and its eyes were always elsewhere.
Injustice doesn’t arrive wearing a badge.
Sometimes it shows up as neglect,
as shrugs,
as adults who should know better
but don’t bother knowing at all.
I was autistic before it was a word
you pretended to understand.
I am autistic now,
still carrying the invoices
you never paid.
The rage didn’t make me violent.
It made me honest.
It made me survive
when survival was the only job available.
So don’t ask me to soften it.
Don’t ask me to forgive it cleanly.
These words are my proof of life—
written with shaking hands,
written without permission,
written because silence
was the first thing that tried to kill me
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