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Ten Years After Autism Diagnosis

           This morning I was on my knees on the kitchen floor and I was not cleaning. I was begging for divine intervention. Ten years since the autism diagnosis. Ten. Years. A full fucking decade. I have aged threefold. I am baffled and broken but no closer to an answer than I was when we started this journey. I believe I believe I believe, I repeated over and over as if faith could function like magic. If I just prayed hard enough a fairy godmother would appear to grant my wish. Heal my son. Or give me his pain. My prayers soon turned into an angry soliloquy, a version of the rant I I have said more than once before. Leave him alone now, you son of a bitch. I have done all that you asked. I have tried every potential solution you have given me. Every medicine. A special school. Holding out. Holding on. I cannot hold it in lately. The rage keeps bubbling over at the most inopportune moments—when I’m packing lunches or standing in the middle of the ...

New chapbook from Rattle press is available!

Turn Left Before Morning, Rattle chapbook contest runner-up, is now available. You may purchase a copy on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Turn-Before-Morning-April-Salzano/dp/1931307318/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479750138&sr=8-1&keywords=turn+left+before+morning In the chapbook Turn Left Before Morning, April Salzano explores the daily struggles involved in parenting a child with autism. These poems map a mother’s quest for understanding of a world that requires a significant shift in perspective and a new definition of what it means to love a child. The key to navigating the rough terrain of autism is not something she discovers, but is instead something that has been subtly guiding her all along: autism is as wonderful as it is terrifying, as humorous as it is heartbreaking, in alternating and equal measures.
Here is a link to my chapbook, The Girl of My Dreams, available from Dancing Girl Press.  I am proud to say the cover photos are by my son. https://dulcetshop.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/the-girl-of-my-dreams-april-salzano