I’m thinking about how to get the right complement of people to understand that as a person with autism, my speech might be stuck like a boat on dry land, but my mind is actually very talkative. I write these blogs obsessively because even though I can’t talk with my mouth, I know how to type to speak my heart and soul to you.
I was silent for four years until the day my mom sat me down in front of a computer and held my pointed finger above the keyboard. I typed my name and she was beyond relieved to know that I was in there thinking, spelling, writing in my mind all the things I would one day type to tell people what I thought. Now, after all this time, my life has become an open opportunity to write this blog.
When I was only six, I wrote my first poem. I was out of control with energy and autistic mischief but we were waiting in the waiting room at the hospital for me to go and get some sensory integration therapy and my mom decided to type with me to keep me from running off while we waited.
I typed this first poem in segments because I had to run off between phrases, but finally, she got the whole poem which I am happy to share here since, actually, before I was a blogger I was a poet. I still am, but somehow these blogs just keep coming. I still want to do poetry, but now I’m blogging, and it’s so much fun doing prose. It’s as if every thought I ever had in silence is now ready to stream out of my soul through the end of my pointed index finger. It is so wondrous!
Thank you for reading what I have to say. I appreciate this audience greatly. Now, without further ado, here is that poem.
Theodore the Rabbit
by Darcy Reed, 1993
Once there was a rabbit
who thought he was a bear.
His name was Theodore.
One day he lost his inner peace.
The great thing about that was he didn't care.
He had an idea about right thinking.
It was the best way to think.
You just imagine that you have magic.
Then you can go anywhere.
Theodore decided to go to the forest to find his inner peace and there it was. He had to just kick it in the butt. Then he got his inner peace back. Then he yelled, "I'm happy again!" Then he realized that going to the forest wasn't necessary in the first place. He had. . . . you know . . . . inner peace within his heart.
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For those interested, here are links to my poetry collections:
Childhood poems: https://www.musefuse.org/darcy-reed.html
Recent poems: https://thecreedofreed.wixsite.com/darcymodernpoetry
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