I am fascinated by my five-year-old body.
It is doing the robot. It is going through

the motions. It is doing the robot, the robot
motions, the motions of a robot.

My teenage body loathed robotics and stiffness.
It loathed itself.

When I was undergoing diagnostic testing,
the neuropsychologist validated my self-loathing.

 [I am stiff and stimmy, stiff and stimmy.]

"You walk just like an aspie," she remarked
one day, just as I was entering her office.

Later, her pen noted my odd gait, noted my
body's rigidity, noted my robotic and wrenching

hands.
Moving autistically is how I move. It's

what I know. It's what I do.

I used to try otherwise. I listened to my
teachers; I sat on my hands. I listened to

my teachers; I attended a couple school dances.
I listened to my teachers; I timed my pauses

between my verbal punctuation.
Three seconds in between each sentence. [one

two three] Two seconds after commas [one two], 
semicolons --

Fuck. I don't remember.
I listened to my teachers; I self-loathed.

My favorite childhood photograph is a blur
of a stim. I am smiling in my own way, with

my hands, with my mouth open. I am standing,
and I am autistic.

Five-year-old body, there is grace. How you
move is grace. Oddness and rigidity are grace.

You lumber, and you lumber -- you are a head
attached to a body, and the body is grace.

Stiff and stimmy, stiff and stimmy, stiff
and stimmy is grace.

When I stub my toe, I am graceful and autistic.
The leg casts and braces from toddlerhood,

they are graceful and autistic. The songs
I know, the assholes I shatter, the rocking

of my body to the sound of a fire truck or
the sound of a closing door or the sound of

a repetition, repetition, repetition -- these
are all autistic, these are all rhetoric,

these are all rigid fluid moving grace.

I am fascinated by my five-year-old body.
It is loud, and it doesn't give a fuck.