It’s physically impossible
to live under a rock
unless you’re dead.

I don’t got nothing:
do people realize
the contradiction?

Curiosity
can’t kill animals
or people;
it might
severely injure them,
but death is dramatic.

If you like someone,
tell them.
Don’t pull this
huge scheme that
will send them away
from you within seconds.

These are just a few things
I don’t understand.

Sarcasm eludes me.
Some jokes stick,
others stay but
float away
as quick as they came.

I don’t understand
the point of randomly
abbreviated words,
especially when
they’re only one
to three syllables.

Body language
is hard to
decipher.

Reading people’s
expressions is
complicated.

It takes time
to process
information
or the tones
of people’s
voices.

Thinking logically
is the only thing
I know.

I was nine
or ten years
old when I
found out.
When yet another
thing in my life
needed a diagnosis.

Not autism,
not ADHD
(which doctors thought
I had when
I was younger),
but something else
neither my parents
nor I had
ever heard of.

Non-Verbal Learning Disorder
has a lot of parts to it.
Some people don’t recognize faces,
others have short memories,
still others have elementary
thinking at 20 years old.

Me? I have a
couple different symptoms myself.
Body language, hidden words
within sentences, someone lying
by making a sarcastic remark–

I have no radar
for these things.
To me, everything is
literal until explained otherwise.

I have a childish outlook;
rather watch movies and
play with my siblings
than be on social media
for hours on end.

It is unclear whether
this diagnosis has
something to do with
my sensitive ears,
my fear of crowds,
my medical PTSD,
the reason I prefer
to be alone
instead of hanging
out with crazy
kids from school…

Maybe those are just
side effects of
ten brain surgeries.

But its sure impact,
the fact that I
can’t understand a joke
for the life of me,
has made my life
both easier and harder
than it is for
other people.

I say easier
because of this.
School comes easy;
language lessons,
writing techniques,
math equations
stick so well that
people either think
I’m smart or crazy.

Teachers always have
good things to
say about me.
My parent-teacher conferences
are delightful drinks of water
after a week in the desert.

People try to tease me
and it passes through me;
I’m an open window for things
to float out of.

All of this
because of my
determination through disability,
my broken mind
finding pleasure and
drive in the
quirkiest of areas.

I say harder
because of this.
To me, a joke is an attack.
In some situations, humor
cannot be found unless it
is cued at or explained.

My dad once yelled at me joyfully;
I thought I was in trouble.
My mom joked that she was pregnant;
she knows that can’t happen anymore.
When my sister was mad at me, she once said,
“Well, aren’t you the smart one,”
And I thought of my 3.906 GPA
when really, she didn’t mean it
as a compliment.

Someone in the Creative Writing Club
once said “ofc” and “lmao”
and I had to ask for clarification.
The boy who used those words
yelled at me, probably wondering,
how could she be so stupid?

I don’t care what people think;
I don’t care about this minor setback
which is a great advantage.
In some ways, yes– it’s a curse.

But for me, the ability
to think logically like
no one else can…
That is a gift.

A defect turned miracle
that I use to survive
in this messed up,
perplexing world.