Show me how you do it how you write like that with words that don’t read like words
in lines that don’t line up
in blocks that take me apart
and put me back differently,
she said.
Come and live with me a day
not in my shoes, because that’s silly
to think that shoes can teach
but in my mind where you can
stay awhile and help me
obsess on things past fixing
drown with me in dreams
about my mother
and my father
then explain them better than I can
bow up with me and wrestle demons
that exist in fantasy so real
that they’ll leave us with bruises
the size of apricots and
the colour of plums,
I said.
My father taught me with a shoe
bent over far enough to see
that monsters weren’t under my bed
but behind me with whiskey breath
blown out of veined red cheeks
sent to bed on gusts of vitriol
with stinging so rooted and deep
that it robbed me of sleep
cheated me out of dreams
made fantasy the only part of life
worth living with those still living
at least yours are gone,
You did it.
did what?
Took me apart—
put you back together?
less than,
different?
better.
Show me show me
J.M.C. Kane is the author of the non-fiction book Quiet Brilliance: What Employers Miss About Neurodivergent Talent and How to See It (CollectiveInk UK). He is an ASD-1 and writes from this learned experience. His prose work has been published in more than three dozen literary journals & magazines, including Plough, The New Ohio Review, Blue Mesa, Smokelong Quarterly, and Redivider (Emerson). He lives in New Orleans with his family where he works as an environmental attorney.