

Twenty Years in the Fire: A Love That Survived
High school was starting, and I was a mess. All I could think about back then was finding a soulmate. I met my first real girlfriend, let's call her Squeak, and I loved her endlessly, regardless of her actions. I was convinced she was cheating on me, and decades later I would learn that maybe it was true. I also found out that two people, my first “friends,” were paying her on a dare to date me. She broke my heart, and that heartbreak led me straight to my first psych ward st

The Autistic Lens
Oct 112 min read


On the Wing and Prayer
Strange days are here again. Seven years. That was the line I carried like armor. Seven years sober. Seven years of saying “no,” of...

The Autistic Lens
Oct 13 min read


The Dragon’s Hearth: A Trilogy of Fire
Some poems arrive as fragments, but others arrive as seasons. This one came in three. At the last section, is a blog post separate but connected, showing what love means to me beyond the fire and storm. The first season was longing — To Be Wanted Back. It was the porch light, the lighthouse, the bus seat left open. It was me saying: here is what wanting me looks like, here is what love should look like in return. It was hunger and grief without a funeral. The ache of being t

The Autistic Lens
Sep 292 min read


The Dragon's Hearth
I have thought of sealing the cave, letting the torches gutter, burying myself under stone and silence. I have thought of hoarding...

The Autistic Lens
Sep 292 min read


Ashes and Light
I wrote before about wanting to be wanted back. Tonight I write from the other side of that want— the place where the porch light still...

The Autistic Lens
Sep 282 min read


To Be Wanted Back
I have carried this feeling my whole life— a wet coat across the chest, a tightness that doesn’t loosen, grief without a funeral. I have...

The Autistic Lens
Sep 253 min read


The Myth of "The One"
We didn’t talk much that morning. Just sat there, watching the sun catch the road like it had a secret to tell. It’s funny—when I was younger, I used to believe that love meant finding “The One.” My soulmate. My twin flame. Chalk it up to Disney movies, maybe, or just being a kid who wanted to feel safe and chosen. Even in elementary school, that was the daydream running through my head. Not “what do you want to be when you grow up?” but “who’s going to sit beside me forever?

The Autistic Lens
Sep 233 min read


False Cures. Real Harm. What Parents Need to Know.
The Trump administration has now confirmed the worst of the rumors. In a sweeping set of announcements, they have officially endorsed the...

The Autistic Lens
Sep 223 min read


The Fool on the Hill
Some stories don’t end in triumph. Some don’t end in reconciliation. Some just end in silence, and the decision to stop carrying someone else’s weight. This is one of those stories. For fifteen years, I loved someone. Not passively, not distantly. Romantically, fiercely, foolishly at times. He was the first man I ever had feelings for, and I believed, again and again, that if I just held on long enough — if I carried both of us long enough — he’d find his way back to the boy

The Autistic Lens
Sep 182 min read


If You Still Remember
I still remember the boy who spoke in storyboards and starlight, who built worlds from wonder and dreamed of saving them. I don’t know if...

The Autistic Lens
Sep 182 min read


If The Hill Grows Quiet
I used to think we were walking the same road, two travelers carrying the same weight, seeing the same cracks in the world. It felt less...

The Autistic Lens
Sep 181 min read


If the Boy Never Returns
I thought love might be enough— twenty years of reaching, twenty years of believing that if anyone could break through the mirrors, it...

The Autistic Lens
Sep 182 min read


Your love is suspicious, for I do not deserve it.
Those words sit on my chest like a wet coat. They are not dramatic for me; they are accurate. Not because a stranger told me so once, but because I keep proving it to myself — in the small, honest places where I can’t hide. In the ways I’ve spoken (too loud, too blunt), in the ways I’ve lashed out when sleep and food and safety ran thin, in the ledger I keep of all the times I failed to be the person I promised I’d be. I am not trying to be poetic about it. I am trying to be

The Autistic Lens
Sep 186 min read


What Comes After the Gunfire?
So, let’s talk about the news that broke today. I don’t know who will read this, or how it will be judged, or what eyes will pick it apart once it leaves my hands. That’s fine. I only know that I can’t carry it silently. I need to let it out, to trace the shape of my grief in words, even if I don’t have answers. Because this is not how it should have happened. There is no healing in this. No restoration. The people who were harmed by his words, by the violence he nurtured and

The Autistic Lens
Sep 105 min read


Nothing Is Wrong: From Storm to Serenity
Nothing Is Wrong is what I said to survive—but every note tells the truth: storm, fracture, survival, and finally, a breath of serenity....

The Autistic Lens
Sep 65 min read


Tylenol, Autism, and the Temptation of Easy Answers
Update (Sept. 22): Rumors are now circulating that Donald Trump will announce folinic acid as a “cure” for autism, while doubling down on...

The Autistic Lens
Sep 53 min read


Autism Is the Lens I See Through
For me, autism isn’t outside of my art—it’s the lens itself. The way I frame the world is the way I live in it. I used to think I was...

The Autistic Lens
Sep 36 min read


I Didn’t Get Here Alone
The smallest kindnesses—turning down the volume, reminding me to eat—kept me standing when I thought I’d fall. I don’t think any of us get through this life on our own. We like to imagine we’re self-sufficient, that we pull ourselves up and carry the weight alone. But sooner or later, life knocks every one of us flat. Illness, loss, betrayal, heartbreak, storms you didn’t see coming. Nobody is too strong to fall. And when you do, what gets you through isn’t politics or argume

The Autistic Lens
Sep 33 min read


How Do You Stay Human in an Ordinary World?
Cruelty is loud. Apathy is rampant. My rebellion is simple: keep caring, keep clear, keep human in an ordinary world.

The Autistic Lens
Aug 234 min read


How to Win Friends and Control Them
" When you learn to “ win ” people by mirroring their desires , deflecting conflict , and flattering their egos , what you ...

The Autistic Lens
Aug 174 min read
