For today’s prompt, write a quirk poem. The quirk could be a personal or human quality. Or it could be a quirk of fate. — Robert Lee Brewer, Writer’s Digest
“quirky” is a way I have described my son
it seems like these days
it has become a sort of shorthand
for some of the qualities associated with autism,
the type that used to be called Asperger’s
We had Rader tested
that spring when he was struggling the most
and though he ticked some of the boxes
— social awkwardness,
intense focus on his areas of interest —
he didn’t have the early childhood history
to meet the qualifications
but he was quirky,
and I loved those things about him
the way Mario was the hero
of his whole life
from the time we got a Wii game system
and played Super Mario Galaxy
when he was about six
the way storytelling
and world building
were how he made sense of
the society and culture we live in
versus life the way he imagined it should be
the way creating
enjoyable experiences for others
— games (whether board or computer or playground),
videos, books, comics —
was so central to
who he was at the core
I look at it now,
and I think the quirkiness
first saved and then destroyed him.
As I got to the end of writing this poem, I was hit with the parallel between yesterday’s love poem and this one: the depth of my love for Rader devastated me when he took his life, and then that love and the love from others with which I was surrounded helped to begin to build me back up. Here, it’s the idea of quirkiness both saving and destroying. There are so many powers in life that can be used ‘for evil or for good,’ to put it in superhero-ish terms. I’m sure I’ll continue to ponder this idea in the coming days. Who knows, it might come up in more poetry before the end of the month.