Friday Poem: "Anatomy of a Five-Lined Skink"

As someone who has been diagnosed with ADHD late in life, I have had a hard time reconciling my past experiences with this new (to me) lens of neurodivergence. When I reread past poems like this one, which I originally wrote when I was in my 20s, it becomes much clearer to me that I have been trying for most of my life to express on the page what it's like to be in my head. I just never knew there was any other way to think.

Anatomy of a Five-Lined Skink

Nose to tip, maybe six inches, three of them azure tail.

It weighs two feathers, a breeze, and some rain:

a sliver of flesh in a blissful calm between wiggles,

ribs like leaf-veins, or thinner, a comb of dog’s whiskers.

Lungs the size of orange seeds.  Brain-pebble.

At least that’s what I can see out the window.  It scoots

out from the live oak’s shadow, then stops so still it disappears.

Its heart must be humming like a fly’s wing, though,

on its shingle of daylight, exposed to passing birds—

to them it’s not much more than a crunchy worm.

All this so I won’t hear her talking: categorically

replacing each word from her mouth with a word

about a lizard.  I’m filing away “space” and “needs”

and “time to figure things out,” making myself hear

“tongue” and “scales” and “hunting bugs in the magnolia.”

And she claims I never listen.  How else might I focus so well?

Me and the reptile both, wobbling on a slick bubble of time—

there’s only so much running around a skink can do in sunlight

and live.  And still her, talking through it—tears, chatter,

rustle, birdsong, a passing truck.     

This poem appeared in River Styx No. 57.