A boy once
described to me how the sound
of
conversation is like static
incomprehensible
impenetrable
overwhelming
and yet
unfathomable eyes stare at him,
expecting a
response
but he doesn’t know the right rules
and averts his eyes
and sometimes slides beneath a table
“We’ve
adjusted our lives
so much”
his mother says
“We just
want him to be happy.”
What is
happiness for a kid
who was
given a white noise machine in his head;
a mind that
remembers exactly how many cheerios he had in his cereal last Monday;
who hears
words that sound like colors and look like geometric shapes;
anxiety
that’s only calmed by tapping rhythmic patterns on his face even when everyone
is looking;
and a brain
that can’t figure out the rules that everyone else was just born knowing
He draws
dragons.
He draws
dragons a lot.
He draws
them flying through infinite white paper skies
and shooting
Crayola fireballs across stiff construction paper
Each dragon
has a human that they’re born matched to
Fated to be lifelong
partners against the threat of the world
He tells me about this while he draws a picture of boy
proudly standing next to his own dragon
cerulean scales painstakingly precise
each marker line deliberately placed from memory and practice
His speech
marches purposefully forward
expounding
the details of his world
Did you know
dragons can read the human mind?
He tells me that
this means
the boy in the
picture he’s been drawing
doesn’t have
to explain himself
to anyone.
