Monique Ocampo Writes
As a child I wanted to explore everything
Wanting to understand all I saw
Following stories of scientists and detectives
My role models were the kinds that wore uniforms and lab coats
But one day I got lost
I followed a rabbit where I shouldn’t have gone
All of a sudden, I started falling downward
Down, down, down
In love
In drama
In worlds far beyond my reach
I got lost in the stories
And in the stories I found a monster
The monster lashed out at my own friends
for not acting in a certain way
The monster despised the world I lived in,
preferring the chaos of her wonderland
Illusions became more valuable than gold
And all I could do was write
Write the monster’s laments as if they were my own
How little did I know, how quickly did I grow
In a large barren dust bowl,
my monster told me her name
Autism was her species
Aspergers, her claim to fame
She wasn’t the result of faulty software
but built by the creator with a different hardware
She processed my thoughts, filtering them like coffee
Strong and harsh and bitter at times
until I added some milk or some artificial sweet
to make some version of me complete.
I denied this monster’s existence for a long time
Still lost in the harsh blinding sun
Far from what I used to know.
I put her in a drawer,
hoping she’d be forgotten,
falling for the lies of different monsters instead.
These monsters came
in the form of handsome men
And it wasn’t until they were gone
that I realized they never saved me.
My monster came back with a vengeance
as I transitioned from high school to college.
We walked on a tightrope
between the dark wonderland we knew
and a land of a thousand stars that shined in the distance
My monster and I fell down again
but landed in a safety net
in the land of a thousand stars
Stars that shone brightly in the dark, black sky
But I loved each new day as much as the night.
I started introducing my monster to my friends
who were surprised she even existed.
Little did either of us know
that this starry paradise had hunters in the foxholes.
One night, I was caught in a tidal wave
and found myself naked for all to see
My monster took over and started shrieking
singing out her agony
We drowned in a torrent of negative thoughts
with no one to save us
Nobody helped.
As the tide washed out,
the Queen of Foxhunters took us to court
and commanded my monster to chop off her own head.
Instead, we ran as far as we could
away from the heartless queen and her hunters.
We made a plan to work together.
The monster learned to be more like the others
And I hid safely inside a white tent
until a knight in shining armor
came and asked me to dance with him.
My monster was puzzled by this new man
And sometimes she would cover my mouth.
While I worried about why my white knight
seemed to be walking a tightrope of his own.
Then all of a sudden
Everything started falling away
Changing too fast for either me or my monster to handle.
The white knight got on his horse and rode off without us
Then we lost a beloved friend
Then we had to leave the starry land
No more games in the clean, white tent.
No solid ground, no safety net.
Wandering around, we got stuck in a rut
Lost in a maze with no way out
A little maiden in the maze started stringing us along
But when we came to a dead end,
the maiden became a minotaur
My monster couldn’t handle the minotaur’s strength
With a pierce of a horn, my monster lost
She fell down again
Shattered
Crying
And I limped along with my monster to safety
Not looking back, fearing the minotaur’s chasing.
Out of the labyrinth, we got caught in a storm
Constant rain pouring down on us.
But we stayed in the storm and let it wash us clean
It became the source of our growth, the source of our healing
The water healed my monster and stopped the bleeding.
Then the rain was gone and the sun came out.
I saw a reflection of the monster in the water
Except the reflection was that of my face
The monster was inside me all along.
Like a softer Hyde to my little Jekyll
or a female version of that big green thing
The monster’s still in me, being sought by the hunters
Too bad they don’t know I have the strength to protect her
After all, she’s a part of me
She’s the armor I wear and the tears that I shed
She’s the sword in my hand and the thoughts in my head
She’s my curiosity, insatiable in her hunger
Devouring knowledge and building new dreams
She’s a part of me without being all of me
And I wouldn’t want it any other way
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