A poem about relationships, mental health, and autism.
Feet together on tiles too cold to touch. Bare
feet fill the room with the colour blue, in a shade that neither of us like. The wrong time on the clock stands out even more in here. Where the thick blue silence makes it harder to know whether to reach out with my hands. It’s the temperature of October now, when the sun isn’t there past five to
warm the tiles that sit beneath our toes, only getting colder. I always hate the cold but my skin can’t take the heat of anything alive in this room, where everything feels thick. It takes too long to decide whether to reach out, whether to stroke softly or grip tightly. So instead fists hang by
my sides clenching and unclenching to the rhythm of a tune in my head.
Singing over my confusion to bring me back to the centre. I need to stop and look head on. To decide whether all of the words that I think about saying should be left to fall in breaths and droplets onto the floor tiles. Or into my open palms where whispers fall like sugar into medicine. All of the granules dissolve leaving only sweetness, to cushion over hard edges. My skin isn’t ready to feel the heat of anything alive in this room, where there’s something in the way. Stuck in the space between my skin and yours.
Each time I notice the winter sky eyes at the side of
my face, they look away again. The pull of the patterns in
the floor and the tiles gets stiffer and my mouth and the
voice that it holds leave me here
in all of the thickness of the blue.
My will to step over it all into another place moves slowly through the blue and the ice. Until our toes start to thaw.
Slowly at first and then all at once.
Poem Written By Ella Pitt
(They/Them)