AUTISM: A POEM.

. . . . .VIII. Night Terrors

. . . . . 1

Even now as he wakes to see me, knows
. . . . . I have been watching him sleep, he still keeps

close to his side that thick book he’d hidden
. . . . . all night long under his covers, with one nearly

fisted hand holding it so tightly that I might
. . . . . not be able to read the raised and finely-printed

white letters extending like a small animal’s
. . . . . vertebrae along the length of its spine, spelling

out those dry technical title words spread
. . . . . across another of his mother’s medical texts.


. . . . . 2

Each night he reads what he can understand
. . . . . now about how the body’s outward appearance

often deceives, warnings of its weakness
. . . . . remaining unseen like those few signs of life lost

beneath the little lake outside his bedroom
. . . . . window, its still water frozen and snowed over

ever since winter’s first frost. He seems
. . . . . to be seeking some sense of security that might

arise from learning answers to unformed
. . . . . sentences, the questions he is yet unable to ask.

. . . . . 3

The graphics picture all kinds of diseases,
. . . . . and I wonder if these images feed his dreams,

frighten him late at night after the set timer
. . . . . turns off his dresser light or those weak final

beams of moonlight—drifting down cold
. . . . . air currents, sifting through the now bare trees,

falling among the house’s eaves, filtering
. . . . . between curtains in his window—fade away,

whether he believes even shrouds of darkness
. . . . . cannot erase what he’s seen, cannot ease any pain.