How I think and how I talk don’t line up.

In person, I’m the nerd with the fire hose. Facts. Details. More details. One thing hooks into another and suddenly I’ve dumped the whole damn attic at your feet.

I wish I could stop doing it.

But autism. The machine runs how it runs.

Inside my head, though, none of this stuff is just stuff.

A record. A tea. An old machine. A bus ride. They’re little electric wires running backward through time. Touch one and something comes alive—a place, a person, an old version of me.

That’s what I’m always trying to explain.

Not the thing.

Why the thing has its teeth in me.

And somehow, when I open my mouth, out come the specifications.