I am blue, five pounds. I fit in my father’s palm. My mother brags that I am small. My mouth does not open except to eat; my lungs do not push out loud sounds. This is good, she says. I am quiet. She holds my body to hers at all times.

**********

My thighs are on fire; the polyester burns my skin with long, red scratchy patches. My mouth cries sounds that come from inside me. My eyes burn from the light bulb in the kitchen and the hot dish feels like pebbles on my tongue. Pebbles and dirt. 

I stand on the living room table while mother pulls a brush through my blonde snarls. My mouth makes no sounds but my sister sees my tears and she cries through her mouth.

My brother sets fire to the house before I am born and almost kills my mother and my father. This is before he owned me. He almost makes me not born.

Cold feels good on my burning skin. My legs walk out the front door early in the morning to sit in the snow. My hands rub the snow on my skin. My skin is not burning but it is blue. My father picks up my body and brings me inside. The clothes make my skin burn again.

My ears like my body to balance on my panda with red wheels. My bare feet stand on the panda even though my thighs itch. My arms try to balance but I start to fall. My eyes see my father running and he catches me with his big hands around my waist. Then he holds me and his eyes smile at my eyes.

My body is in line for somersaults where you put your legs out straight and the biggest girl somersaults toward me with her feet out wide and her foot hits my stomach and no air will come into my mouth. I fall down on my knees and my chest burns. My house is safer than this place, but not for long.

My eyes see what is there when my brother pulls down his zipper – the thing is pink and ugly with hair and my eyes see his eyes staring at my eyes like I should smile with my mouth but my fingers itch and no air will come into my mouth.

In the bath with mother she turns on the jet streams and the bubbles feel good on my fingers and my toes.  I try putting my secret place next to the bubbles and it feels really good but then my mother’s mouth makes a loud sound that hurts my ears and she pushes me out of the tub and I am wet on the wool carpet and it is itchy on my bottom.

In my bed I like to touch the place where the bubbles felt good because it makes a bubbly feeling inside my stomach, but also my stomach has knots because mother says those bubbles are bad. Her eyes see my hand under the blanket by my bubble place so I move my hand.

My ears hear cardboard scratching but my eyes are blind in the dark box. My bottom feels heavy when my brother lifts the box somewhere but I don’t know where. My body feels too small in the box so I rock from side to side until the box falls a long time onto my head and I go to sleep.  When I wake up he says in my ears not to tell anyone but my neck and my head are hurting like knives are inside them. Later mom tells my ears she knows what happened but she doesn’t take me to the doctor. 

My nose smells her perfume and my eyes look at mother in a dress and dad in a suit and they smell happy like real people smell.

My legs make round shapes around the horse’s back and sides while my hands hold the saddle. The hat hurts my head because it is tight, but it is a cowboy hat so I wear it. My heart is happy and I feel like a real girl not an in-the-dark girl.

My brother puts me in a box again in the dark place basement but he is in the box this time too with no clothes on and he wipes something round and wet on my bubble place, while his mouth makes a sound that makes my ears hurt.

My eyes and ears and my fingers can hear in the dark that someone is in my closet waiting to get into bed with me and there is so I go sleep with my sister even though mother doesn’t like it when we sleep together in one room.

My brother says I should learn to “breathe without air” so he takes me to the dark place basement and makes me lie down between the two yellow beanbags. He sits on the top beanbag and my chest is on fire for a long time and my eyes cry but my fingers can’t move.

**********

My feet and brain and arms learn to skate with my legs and my muscles get strong and I am fast. Faster than any big kid or grown up. Faster than a horse and the wind feels almost better than the bubbles.

I skate and I win and mother’s eyes look at my chest and say I am growing now and we have to cover up my chest because it is bigger.

I like popcorn and how it feels in my hands and in my mouth with the salt on my tongue, but mother says in my ears don’t eat it or I’ll be fat like my father.

**********

A boy with brown eyes kisses my mouth with his mouth and my heart loves this boy and he is kind to me even though I feel like an in-the-dark girl.

On Easter Sunday he kisses my too-big breasts and says they are beautiful and I believe him and we do the thing mother says is disgusting but it isn’t and we laugh and my brain remembers this forever as the best moment even though the condom got stuck and we laughed about that too.

My mouth makes the best singing in the school and then in the state.

Mother says to my ears that she could be thin by just not eating potatoes.

My eyes look in the mirror and I want to cut off my breasts with a knife but I can’t so I cut my arms instead. My brain and my mouth break up with the boy with the brown eyes because I am an in-the-dark girl.

Mother takes me to a surgeon to cut off my breasts so I will be thin and wear pink.

I do not wear pink. I cut off my hair and cut on my arms; my mouth sucks in smoke and vodka until my mouth can’t sing anymore.

I drive my car fast down the frozen highway with the lights off and the windows down and my mouth screams at the moon even though the moonlight is the only thing keeping me alive.

**********

I marry a man and my body makes two babies. My brain goes to law school, my heart stops writing poetry and my body gets sick. The man says he never loved me and I should have made more money and he doesn’t love my body.

I meet another man who says to my ears that he loves me and I am perfect and my fingers know something is wrong and my neck remembers this feeling like when it almost got broken in the box, but my neck keeps it a secret.

My body marries this man and my heart doesn’t know what is happening when my neck starts to cry and he chokes me but I don’t die I just have a seizure and I shake and shake and he says he likes it and asks can I dress up like a little girl and then my stomach vomits out my mouth into the sink.

**********

My fingers are the only thing left that is alive because they talk to my dog in his fur and his eyes talk into my eyes and we decide to take the boys and run away.

We run away to my father’s house and my body becomes alive again and my lungs start to breathe again and my mouth remembers to sing and my brain writes poetry to my heart while my dog fetches his ball in the lake I can taste with my eyes while my boys drive the boat.

My eyes cry when I look at the dock where we buried my father in the lake and my face feels wet but also my heart feels big because the carpet feels gritty on my toes where my dog chewed up a stick.

**********

My body and my heart and my brain drive us all back to Minnesota and my brain buys us a house where our bodies can live and breathe and our necks will not cry and our fingers can talk to the fur on our dogs whenever we want to, as long as we want to.

– Signe Land

Author’s Note: I was formally diagnosed with Autism in the fall of 2018, but the diagnosis was no surprise to me. Growing up, I felt like an alien in an unnavigable world. Everything about me was aberrant: I was too loud, too emotional, too anxious, and too sensitive. Soon after I earned my MFA in 1996, I stopped writing. I could not reconcile my words and my truth with what I believed was “acceptable” literature. Too often, I abdicated my narrative to the people around me: family, doctors, psychiatrists, and friends. Now, having survived addiction, recovery, divorce, and abuse, I write my truth as it comes to me. Through my writing, I have taken back my narrative, and I hope to inspire others to do the same.