Neurodiverse

I, nervous reed,
ever so ruined.
Our nerves die!
Our seed riven,
severed in our
reveries. Undo?

Deserve in our
derive. No ruse.
Revise, undo re
overused rein.
Never die sour!

Nerved, I rouse,
……unrevised ore,
……due reversion,
……overdue siren.
Endure is over,
over. Nu desire –
redo universe.

**

Night vision: apology to a late-diagnosed daughter
Autism

for jamming the toothbrush into your mouth while you cried and fought your body being entered for setting you up to fail with reward charts you could only manage for a day for scolding and enforcing consequences for denying you pocket money trying to make you do chores you could never do and didn’t understand for forcing food between your lips and frightening you into swallowing for the calm lengthy reasoning I did with you as to why you should do better for feeling choked that you needed every inch of my personal space all the time for praising you when you’d done something right when praise just made you more anxious for towering over your tiny body and pointing my finger as I shouted for not realising after you’d gotten off a chair thirty times and I’d put you back on thirty times that there was a learning problem not a discipline one for bellowing at you to go to sleep sleep sleep for putting you back in your bed over and over like Supernanny said until you were beside yourself and so was I for denying you screen time which made you start peeling skin off yourself in agitation for pushing you into the bath and out of the bath and telling you to stop whingeing as I did your hair with the brush you howled was sharp and the hairdryer you howled was loud for putting back on you the clothes and shoes you perpetually pulled off for losing sympathy about your endless injuries for never telling my friends that you bit your mouth till it bled and wiped the blood on the walls and that your ceaseless anxiety had worn you to a bag of bones and that I walked on eggshells instead of enjoying my parenting for leaving you wailing in time-out for anything I did to you to assuage my own distress for being a new parent who had no language for what you were, for being slow to see you, I’m sorry. You are parallax, shoal, diaspora. You are percipience, cloud-measurer, reverie. You are love-scar, bioluminescence.

**

The viola d’amore on why she avoids conversation
Empathy overarousal in autism

Too highly strung, and speech is vellicate:
……..every note of mild concern in your voice
……..……..amplified in my sympathetic strings.

They do not require playing: made of gut instinct
……..each augments vibrations, as I hear the matters of your life
……..……..and loved ones, who’s in care, whose cancer’s going badly –

here your griefs enter my delicate sprucewood ……..
……..as oscillation, as finely-tuned carnivorous birds
…………….to later swoop, to tear, in the cage of my skin,

in my head carved into unbearably vulnerable Cupid, ……..
……..his eyes covered against weldschmertz. I am unfretted
……..……..but how I fret, your lacks and losses louder in my nerves

than in your own: here the sound-wounds in my body ……..
……..open in shapes of flaming swords. How I cannot bear,
……..……..as Mozart said, the stillness of the evening, the swelling

harmonics of distress, until the pains of thousands
……..cry through me in agonised haloes. I cannot come near
……..……..your troubles. I must love you deaf, afar.

 **

The shamed body addresses its owner
Autistic burnout, dyspraxia, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue

I did not ask to be given to you
already broken, bits rattling in the box.

There was no kintsugi craftsman
to lovingly mend me with gold
in the seventies.

At two, my inability to catch
presaged much. At fifteen, the hard smack
of my body on the orange lino confirmed it.

I failed to leave home to backpack.
At nineteen, it took my mother
to pull a jumper over my head.
I bought plastic cutlery – not as painful to lift.

By the nineties, real women
wore power suits, did step aerobics
and made up their minds to get over cancer.
Running boardrooms, they ran away from us.

So what could you talk to your friends about,
what was the argot?
You got angry, disavowed me. I waited:
you couldn’t live without me.

You dressed me to look like the others.
Weekend at Bernie’s
seemed funny at the time. People said
I looked like Nicole Kidman, had a bright future.
We both knew better.

It was only at night, when all was still,
that you listened: we made poems together.

And now, your daughter diagnosed,
you speak me back into being,
apply like honey to wounds
language to each deficit.

You say my names: but will you introduce me
to your friends? Are you still ashamed –

**

The autistic woman’s self-compassion blessing

Lay down the telephone.
May wheeling birds speak your messages.

Lay down your medical advocacy.
May pink robins nest in your Centrelink forms.

Lay down your twelve-hour productivity.
May your bed be praised, scented with spices.

Lay down your friendship anxieties.
May the words you said be received like bouquets.

Lay down the baggage of completion.
May quokkas carry away your unfinished projects.

Lay down the grout cleaner.
May books and waratah bloom in unswept corners.

Lay down the good mother’s drivenness.
May children grow strong by your fountain of loyalty.

Lay down the body shield of silence.
May chosen friends give ear to your simple needs.

Lay down the paper doll of stereotype.
May fierce determination create your singular success.

 ———————————————————–

All five poems were originally published in She Doesn’t Seem Autistic, Puncher & Wattmann, 2023.

Esther Ottaway has won or been shortlisted for the Tom Collins, MPU International, Montreal, Bridport, Woorilla, Mslexia, Queensland Poetry Festival Ekphrasis and other prizes. Her second collection, Intimate, low-voiced, delicate things (Puncher & Wattmann), won both the Tim Thorne Prize for Poetry and People’s Choice in the Tasmanian Literary Awards. Her latest collection is She Doesn’t Seem Autistic. She has a forthcoming anthology, Raging Grace: Australian writers speak out on disability (Puncher & Wattmann), edited with Andy Jackson and Kerri Shying. Esther has co-edited Australian Poetry Journal with Scott-Patrick Mitchell, and will serve as a judge for the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize.

 

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