Amy Nocton
A Work in Transitions

Written after I spent a weekend at the New England Young Writers Conference at the Bread Loaf Campus of Middlebury College in Vermont with my gender questioning child who is also Autistic.

We maneuver
along the scarified road,
our lonely, despondent child
and I.
It is too late to snap
the photo: a double covered
bridge spanning a river
whose name escapes
us as it speeds too fast
from view.

We speak our foreign
stilted speak: a stream
of your words that steady strikes
my ears.

You fidget and squirm
hit fist to arm, fist
to thigh.

We arrive under a leaden
sky, open door
and I say,
I say your birth
name I call
you child
of the raven.
And you,
and you turn
quick and you,
and you say,
NO.

Don’t ever call me
that
again.

I blink, stunned,
hurt, confused.
I search for words
slippery as mossy stones.

Later, I sit
in a theater awash with language.
A poem (or a poet?) mentions
Roque Dalton and poetry
like bread and I am lost
because you are lost
and too many times
have we wondered
how much longer you
would live.

The poet (or poem?) pays
homage to those with multiple
rivers of speech.
I cannot find you
among the many chairs
and I think about how
I cannot name
you in any of the fountains
I know.
I cannot give you form
because to say my child
with my other words
would invoke
defined identity.

(Outside others convince you to stay.)

After keynote,
when you are seen,
but maybe not found,
temporary relief.
But days and nights of psycho
babble haunt
us every moment
and I do not feel yet sound
or moored.

Sleep comes early
for you that first night,
soothing you for next
day’s sun.

And you rise,
And you smile.

Two days pass,
you sit in the car
impatient.
This shared time,
now clipped
like the freshly mown
grass whose smell
punctuates the verdant
air. Before we part,
your sharp
punk writer hugs you,
hugs me,
before.

You tell me,
remind me
you love me.
And I repeat
the sentiment
in two of my three
rivers.

We begin our return,
Blister in the Sun
on car stereo.
We promise
to stop
for beauty—
to meander—
to listen,
to photograph.

On one such stop
skirting rocky riverbed,
I wonder
if fish ever feel
motion sick.
And then I slip
and hold your breath
in my sight. I called
your name.
Not your recent name,
but your days’ ago forbidden
name,
and I am frightened
for your response.

But what happened
then was then
and this is now
and the confluence
of time and memory
are complicated.
And you,
you do not scold.

We stop
again, for lunch
Café Loco.
We sit
on flower
shaded porch
on seats red
and black
like your mismatched
Converse chucks.

You say,
They said my dialogue felt natural.
I didn’t tell them it was because
I am always having to interpret
speech. I am always
struggling to figure out what
people want to say.

I say,
I know. That must be very hard.
You shrug,
Yeah.

I remember
the child
who could not pronounce
a name. The r betrayed
your lips,
but you loved
your name
and learned
to say it
with pride.

You say,
I love you, Mom.
Behind my glasses,
my eyes well
with water.

The coffee burns
my tongue
and the sun
slides blurred
behind a cloud
in the colored
koi pond.