The cost inside

I learned the rules before I knew my name

How to dim the light, how to play the game

Count every pause, rehearse each line

Make every jagged edge look fine

Smile at the noise that split my head

Nod at the things I never said

Be the comfort, be the calm

Keep the world within my palm

They called me strong

They called me kind

They never saw the cost inside

I've been living in a careful skin

Stitched so tight I couldn't breathe within

Gave my hours, gave my grace

Learned to vanish without a trace

But under the steady, practiced part

Was a flicker with a frightened heart

So scared that if I let it show

There'd be nowhere left to go

Then she arrived with storm-bright eyes

Sensitive skin and hurricane cries

Hands on her ears in the grocery store

Meltdowns curled on the kitchen floor

They said, "She's dramatic"

"She'll grow out of this"

I felt something ancient twist

Because I knew that overwhelm

That spinning room, that sinking helm

I knew the way the lights can scream

I knew that look

It had been me

And suddenly all the years behind

Rearranged inside my mind

Not broken

Not weak

Not wrong

Just unseen

For far too long

I've been living in a borrowed face

Forty years of saving grace

So good at holding everyone else

I put my own self on the shelf

But when I held her shaking frame

I could not teach her shame

If I told her she was "too much" too

I'd be erasing me and you

So I started reading in the dark

Finding language for the spark

Autistic

Late-identified

A different wiring I'd long denied

Grief for the girl who tried so hard

Gold-star child with battle scars