The Boy With The Eyes Of A Deer
The Boy with the Eyes of a Deer
There was a boy.
He had eyes like a deer — wide, unguarded, brimming with wonder.
He arrived in my life like soft rain to thirsty earth.
I didn’t know then that I had called him in with the aching part of my soul —
the part that wanted to remember.
He wasn’t mine to own.
Though I carried him, bore him, raised him, tended him with a thousand sleepless nights.
Though the world called me his carer,
he was always something more.A guide. A mirror. A fulcrum.
Before him, I thought art belonged to other people. The ones with studios and freedom, the ones whose hands moved like they had permission. Not girls like me, who grew up learning to silence our light, to become functional, sharp, pleasing, invisible. But he came — and with him came unlearning.
The world called it autism.
They spoke in diagnoses and interventions and spectrums.
I nodded, I read, I complied.
But to me he was the Puer Aeternis —
the golden boy of myth,
the eternal child whose soul never calcifies.
He lived in that liminal realm between this world and some ancient, shimmering one.
And I had to follow.
Puddles became portals.
Streetlamp reflections became jeweled offerings on dark tarmac.
A single leaf spinning in the wind became a masterclass in wonder.
Through his deer-eyes, I was returned to truth.
Yes, I was tired.
Yes, I was wrung out and forgotten by the world.
But I was becoming.
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