Dearest

Dearest,
My apologies.

It was no accident you chose me,
We were the same, raging
in a world that blinked
indifference.

A fresh soul delivered from your
warm immersion into
sensory terror.
Your brain already fighting its mismatched puzzle.
Neurons bouncing like beads clicking against the floor.

Images of warm deep embraces-edged 
into the distance.
Childhood pleasures morphed into sensory diets,
play therapies,
mood stabilizers.

No Parenting magazine knew you.

Five years besieged 
by a mind brimming
confusion. 
Wide black eyes glazed, 
never willing to meet my gaze.

No immediacy of love,
It stood in the middle distance
trepidatious, edging silently forward,
a little,
at a time.

Until the day we heard that gentle porcelain doctor say
“autism spectrum.” 

There you stood, and I saw you
for the first time
looking right at me.