Missing Sadly (Draft 0 )
You ask me why I haven’t called
to break the fantasy and
show myself as
the nothing I am
I have my words that sometimes
make me seem poetic and heroic.
Dear, my pen is not really
mightier than the sword of the day.
I don’t know how to parry the blows, and
I will get buried in snow I fear in this
perhaps my last winter.
You don’t have to wait for me, ’cause
I want you to be loved tomorrow
if I can’t make it today
I’m climbing the tree, and
I hope I can fly; can I
borrow your feathers…
I’m dipping your plumes in ink,
and writing as fast as I can.
If you can fly,
I would want you to go, but
I would miss you, it’s just that
you don’t know what a speck of ink I am,
and how much I don’t know how to be bigger,
don’t know how to do anything.
I’m trying to finish my poem-novel, because
if I don’t make millions or a little less, I’m dead.
I don’t know how to do anything at all.
Time is really running out for me.
I can’t be the
scientist I always wanted to be
because I’m autistic. And
probably I can’t be the novelist or poet either
because English was my worst subject in school.
I’m running as fast as I can, but
I keep tripping and falling and
I don’t know if I ever want to get up again.
Sometimes I just want to lie in the ditch
and hope a tree falls on me.
I don’t know how to climb a tree,
don’t know how to reach the sky.
I used to have a plan, but it was silly —
they killed me in college when
they made me fail and not be human anymore, and
there was nobody at all down any hallowed hall:
no counselor, no teacher, no friend, no book.
There’s been nothing, except the kindness of you because
I know there’s something you understand, but
there’s so little I can promise because I have nothing.
Go if you must go,
but don’t go too far.
Maybe somehow
I could learn to climb.
Someday if I find you
in the highest branch of the tree,
I could be quirky and you could be chirpy
Maybe there’s hope for silliness.
— Douglas Gilbert
