Here’s a new poem I wrote today.
I’ve been wanting to learn better ways to react to others’ reactions to my ADHD-influenced oversights (like forgetting the milk). If you’re neurodivergent like me, you may remember a time—or many—when you forgot an item at the store that you double-confirmed with a partner or roommate and even wrote down on a shopping list. And the MOST NEEDED item is the one you forgot!
Maybe your eyes glossed over the item. Maybe you were on the way to it at the store, but an exotic fruit distracted you. Maybe you just forgot the crucial step of checking each item off the list, knowing if you’d done that, you would have remembered the ONE ITEM you needed most, and there’s no time to go back to the store.
What follows is perhaps an overly profound meditation on such a scenario.
Enjoy!
forgot the milk
In the eye of the storm; Things torn, fallen apart, But the center is holding— The stars throw down their spears, dull garden shears, cartoned up years —with a portrait upon it, reflected— where are they directed? Hardly detected until too late: Respect them, but deflect them.
In the eye of the storm. Be the beholder. Be a holder. Be bolder, a boulder, Sissy-fussing, strong shoulder Siren screams and hollow hollers, holy borers
In the eye of the storm, Blinking, step into the sun, inured to its ire, incurred by the fires splintered debris, now funeral pyres.
I’m the eye of the storm.
