autism screening questionnaire
by Eli Nachimson
- Was your speech delayed?1
- Were the first sounds you made words or incoherent screams?2
- Are the words you speak out of place?3
- Do you care far too little? far too much?4
- On some occasions, do you make sounds, like grunts or whimpers, at random?5
- Do you find it hard to know what to say in social situations and make friends?6
- Is there an interest you love so much you would only stop pursuing it at death?7
- Do you hang onto routine?8
- Are your words repeated again and again?9
- When you speak, does it sound flat and monotone?10
1the silence sinks into the dark of night until it consumes all before you even can utter a word. and by the time you learn to speak it is too late to rescue yourself from the ether.
2language forced itself upon your throat and weighed down in your stomach like a shipwreck, falling to form a sea that can never return to the peace it held before it swallowed a harrowed fate.
3in this story, there is a dragon. and a cyborg. and a psychiatry ward that reminds you of one flew over the cuckoo’s next. yes, this conglomeration makes complete sense. it does, you swear.
4a woman tells you she is dying, you forget to shed a tear. but when strangers lose their souls in a structure that a bomb made dust, you cannot stop sobbing.
5trawl the tepid inertia you must endure with noise that would bounce back at you in the chasm of a cave. if an autism falls in a forest it will have made enough sounds to have existed, just once.
6that summer of sandstorms and unusually smelly sweat you sat waiting for a best friend to leave camp and pitch a blanket on the beach, tan like the girls in movies do. you waited until the leaves turned orange and then fell.
7enter: a room, chairs with an audience perched listening for a concerta, no music, staccato turns to legato as your words meander to all ears but your own.
8an anchor, rusted as coral to touch. you hold on to its familiar bars as you plummet in the sky while a plane crashes to oblivion.
9the sounds in your mouth taste like water without cholera, nothing new, something safe.
10fuschia oil paint coats your dress, the folds of your cheeks sunken in the lowly light you pose in. do you know how little i care how you see me? see me in your eyes?