My mind is not like yours. My neurons form different neural pathways, often winding lassos and erratic zigzags. My brain creates bridges from discarded lincoln logs. I can explain a lot.

I can explain to you the complexities of the plot of that one Sandra Bullock movie, yes, the one with Keanu Reeves and the cabin on the lake, yes, the mailbox was a quantum observer, a passage separate from the passing of time, both he and she existed at once, entangled particles sharing a superposition, time is a construct. 

I cannot explain to you the minutiae movements of the human face, the expressions which differentiate sincerity and mockery, though I’ve come to discover that it tends to fall to the latter.

I can explain to you the intricacies of the narrative of that one Taylor Swift song, yes, the one in which she offered forgiveness to the man who was old enough to know better, that burning ember desire to want to believe that people are more than their worst Septembers, that it was just an off day, that, given the opportunity, he wouldn’t possibly repeat history, that the wall of yellow flowers was sincere and good. 

I cannot explain to you the subtleties of the cadence of human voice, the ways in which dancing waves penetrate the hippocampus and uncover your broken shoebox memories, how the waves extract secrets with haunting violin strings. 

I can(not) explain to you the storyline of The Great Gatsby, the reasons why Gatsby wanted to put on the biggest show, the brightest lights, to capture the lost attention of a lost soul, nor the reason humans, the reasons I waste so much potential on the things I was too naive to grasp, as if it were possible to dig up old bodies from graves, to breathe life back into the exanimate, to replay their twisted actions with puppet strings and maybe this time, they’ll have been kind, that their worst September wasn’t all that bad, that Gatsby had just missed seeing Daisy in the crowd. 

I cannot explain away all the times my zigzag patterns were used to lead me astray, all the times my lassoes were used to bind me in camp scout knots. Not every bully in the schoolyard deserves my self-directed excuses, my hopeful embers, my violin strings, not one more second of entanglement of space-time in my mind. I can explain a lot, but I’m tired of all this explaining.

Kaleb Tutt is a neurodivergent author and poet from Louisiana, now living in Rhode Island. His debut poetry chapbook “ir / rational” is out now! If you’d like a copy, find him on Twitter at @KalebT96 or from his publisher, Roaring Jr. Press.