The Beauty of Autistic Knowing

The way of learning pace
was how I learned to string
words the way language paths 
and makes meanings the way
jar of thinking was really

bathing in brine wanting to
for readers to understand
but the management of
language at ABA schools
was demanding speech and

because I couldn’t speak
I was going to the lines of
watchful therapists that tried
the same words over and
over again so I wasn’t

able to express myself
in the ways they thought
I should and that was awful
for me so I want the world
to know that autistic language does a bathing talking feeling

and seeing that immerses
everything and the bathing is
the beauty of autistic knowing.

Credit

From The Wanting Way (Milkweed Editions, 2022) by Adam Wolfond. Copyright © 2022 by Adam Wolfond. Reprinted with the permission of the Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Milkweed Editions, milkweed.org