LANDAU FORTE COLLEGE DERBY
FOLIO ACADEMY MENTEE 2023/24
a poem about masking, an autistic experience
He relaxes his head for the first time in a lifetime
And allows the Birds of dazed confusion to spin in his eyes.
Only now, does he give himself the time to be tired.
Calloused fingers shakily peal off his cracking mask;
It’s face perpetually plastered with a grin much too wide to be real.
A smile, that hides the black cats that curl below his eyelashes
He presses his bones deep into the roughly carpeted floor,
Begging for the ground to melt away, until he and it become one
a tick box sheet full of crosses, wrong place wrong time
He can feel the earth moving, spinning on its axis, and he spins with it.
Eyes closed, the air tastes of his sweat; sweet –
sour, deceitful – Shedding the skin of today to make space for tomorrows.
His toes press through the textures of the carpet
Grounding himself, threading his body through the fibres of the earth
Creating an anchor, a tether, a home where his bones can find peace in the soil
Alone is where his throat is released from its fisted, forced silence –
And his heart, spat from his Mouth and down to his soles
A cold corpse on a rainy day, finally finds its bated beat
The steady hum of a curtain call drum
Waiting patiently for the laceration of applause
The tide that never seems to come in
And as the cracks in the windows begin to turn crimson
The blood light refracting down his splayed fingers
Chaos leaks in , twisting round his cuff scarred wrists
He is served to the world on a polished silver plate
Presented as an offering to the swarms of starving eyes
That tear his strained flesh from his aching bones
In his pupils he finds the world to come
But for now, he finds floor time.
A world created on a living room carpet
Where the real world fades and in it’s place;
Is the sun.
