In Recognition Of World Down Syndrome Day On March 21

Every episode I think “surely, things will get better. Surely, they—at the very least—cannot get worse.” Every episode I am somehow proven incorrect

i keep thinking about how rfk said that autistic people "will never write a poem." i keep thinking about that, about if humanity is calculated on the back of old verse. how far we measure personhood is in baseball and stanza breaks.

i keep thinking - i have over 7k poems on here alone. language can be a special interest, after all. did you know the word autism comes almost direct from the greek word autos, meaning "self"? self-ism.

maybe he is right - i haven't really played baseball. i was a ballet dancer instead. and besides - my sister once accidentally hit me in the face with an aluminum bat. i'm not sure if the injury gives me half points. am i only a person in the dugout? hand in a mitt? swinging?

does softball count? does cricket? am i a person if i throw the ball to my dog. am i a person as long as the ball is in the air, or do i stop being a person as it rolls into the bushes. i took my girlfriend to fenway recently; was i a person in the sun, with my hands up, with the game laid out at my feet in a diamond. i felt like a person, but that was back in the summer, and i often feel my most person-like then.

am i more of a person because of the sheer number of things i've written? does quality matter, or is it quantity? i used to write entire books every summer in high school - i wasn't doing well. i felt the least like-a-person back then. but then - does any person feel human in high school?

in the library, ink on my skin, i feel personhood shutter at the edges of myself. actually, writing feels blissfully like not being myself. it feels birdlike; escaping into creation so my body dissolves and i survive only by muscle memory. i am not there, i am writing.

but who can deny the falconlike focus of warsan shire, the tenderness of mary oliver, the sheer skill of amanda gorman. those are poets. they are certainly human. you could line them up with the way their words have influenced us and measure their literary shadows like wings.

perhaps it was very assumptive of me to want to be a poet rather than "a [ label ] poet." i wanted the work to fill itself in, rather than be stained by what i am. i do not write in despite of my neurodivergence, i am just neurodivergent and writing.

does the poem have to be in english or can i send it through my palms into the coat of my dog. does the poem have to make sense. does the poem have to love you back.

if i break a glass, will the poem appear naturally? or is the act of breaking the glass human-enough. the shards of my life glittering out beneath me - do i have to write the poem, or is it self-evident in the pile of glass splinters? i cannot grasp this world the way other people can. regardless, i endeavor to touch - even the mess - very gently.

i broke my toenail against my coffee table recently. i released a bug outdoors. i made coffee. i walked my dog.

i didn't write a poem about any of these things.

something else, then. existing without humanity.

Manic pixie dream girl with emphasis on the manic

what is joe biden's plan to deal with british kristen

Bud Cubby is everything I want to be when I grow up

Barbie (2023) ✦ Dir. Greta Gerwig

The fascinating thing about Tumblr polls is their ability to demonstrate that no matter how thorough you think you were, it is not possible to ask a simple question with enough clarity to receive the type of answers you were hoping for. You could ask "have you ever been to France?" and clarify that by "you" you're referring to the singular 'you', the person reading the question, and I suppose in cases of multiple/system interpretation of DID, all people currently or previously inhabiting the same body, but no other family members or people that one could otherwise count as 'kin'.

By 'been to' you mean 'has personally physically stepped on french soil' so being on a plane that flew through french airspace doesn't count if you didn't land, sitting in a car/bus that drove through the country doesn't count if you didn't step out of the vehicle at any point, and being there as a fetus when your expecting parent was pregnant with you doesn't count. Getting dicked down by a frenchman also doesn't count, in that case France was in you and not the other way around. Also "I was born in France/I am french" is a separate option.

And you figure you've covered all your bases but once you hit "post", the comment section explodes into mass confusion. Someone wants to know if it counts as visiting France if you were in France but you used a wheelchair. Someone asks if it counts if the frenchman was bottoming, or if you got dicked down by a frenchwoman. Somebody doesn't understand what OP means by "France". Another person is offended that their trip to France "apparently doesn't count" since they also had sex with a local while there. Somebody doesn't understand why "I am french canadian" wasn't included as an option. OP doesn't understand why "I am french canadian" would be included as an option. Four people were frozen stiff in terror and confusion, but made a brave attempt to wildly guess what the question means, and answered something completely wrong.

I accidentally added a poll and can't remove it, so it is now part of this post:

Straight British Kristen Applebees is my new favorite character. I am in love with her. Unfortunately for me, she is straight.

I don’t think anyone understands how much I love Izzy Roland as Jack Manhattan.

His name is Manhattan. He’s from Brooklyn. He’s working in LA. He’s taken down more terrorists than most FBI agents. His partner was killed by the Belgian mafia. He’s a 58-year-old divorcee who is getting divorced another time. He’s a mom. He shoots his gun at doors and misses. He acts like he has a concussion. He doesn’t know how to use a gun but he wants one anyway. He makes out with his own reflection. His catchphrase is “cock-a-doodle-doo bitch.” I’m in love with him and I’m a lesbian