The Colorful Boy

Autism Awareness Special Edition I

By Akriti Kuntal

I wonder how one cannot see that you are so much more alive

Boy with puzzles for a face
red velvet nose and warm hands
coping with the motion of doors and windows
darkness and light in a hammock, seesaw under strings

Your lips part under a scraped violet sky
freckled cheeks like crayon drawings where
only numbers live in those who have faces ordinary as the day

I watch your fingers grab, hold, twist and play
I watch your fingers move around the
alleyways of air, trepidation, a stream of surfacing thoughts
Plucking at the thunderous chin of life, pulling it string by string
buckets of washed sunlight
Watching the earth in her blue dress
and biting her seams, her feathers in your mouth

You turn around, look at life as it trickles into your mouth
and I wonder why
Beauty always rests in disturbance

I flex my knuckles; welcome your flaccid fingers as they
pervade the black hole of my fist
Your eyes curling, your lips
flitting landscapes
of orange grass and ephemeral moments
and I wonder how one cannot see that you are so much more alive.

Click here to read more poems on Autism Awareness in our Special 1

About the Author

The Significant League ( 17 Posts)

The Significant League is a Facebook literary group which was started by a person who has a child with autism and hence has a special interest in it which explains why every April Autism Awareness month the group tries to do something connected with autism. This time, as for last year, it has been to trying to get its members to write poems on autism. Some very fine poems have come up as result.
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