Title: On My Honor
Fandom: Original Poetry
Rating: No Rating
Length: 293
Content notes: None
Author notes: Under the cut
Summary: No summary


On my honor,
I will try
To adhere to the arbitrary and changeable rules
That neurotypicals
Use to structure the world
To their vision.
I will not dance,
Even though there is music blaring
In your stores and malls.
I will not sing,
Though there are songs to be sung.
I will not argue,
When an instruction is followed more literally than
What you anticipated.
For nuance and gray areas and zones of fuzzy discretion
Are terrains and waters that I cannot navigate,
Any more than you would ask a fish to climb a mountain,
Or expect a butterfly to flitter at the bottom of the sea.
It becomes safer to not talk,
To not move,
To not be,
Rather than violate rules that are as mutable as water.
Because
On my honor,
I don't want to offend.
I don't want to make a spectacle of myself.
I don't want to take a thing three steps to far
Because there was no stop sign.
On my honor.
I didn't ask to be this.
To be so fundamentally
Different as to be broken.
To cry when you touch my hair.
To stare blankly when I burn myself.
To scream in terror at a slight sound,
And to be mutely indifferent to the blood
Pouring from some new wound.
On my honor.
I will hide on the fringes with the others
Who are more like than unlike me.
We will huddle together, silent and terrified,
Clawing ourselves in frantic desperation
That we're all about to make a mistake.
Another mistake.
A mistake.
A mistake that slips the scanty disguise that we wear daily,
And then we are back at square one.
Pledging our best to play along though
We don't understand why.
On my honor.


Author's notes: I've been having a very bad few weeks on the autism spectrum. This isn't a thing that goes away when you get older, you just get better at not being noticed. Anyway, I'm really tired from having to pretend to be neurotypical (as opposed to "neurodiverse," that is to say,  autistic) because it is exhausting to have to police every last word and action, including blinking and eye contact. But neurotypicals are freaked out by kids on the spectrum, so semi-functional adults are verboten, and then the non-stop undercover operation begins, frequently within our own households. "Stop being so weird!" "Stop being so literal!" "Stop fidgeting" "Stop that!" Anyway, this poem comes from that place of fatigue and frustration.