The Moon Tonight A quiet reflection beneath a waning crescent sky Tonight, I looked up. Not casually either. I mean really looked. The moon was hanging there as a waning crescent, delicate and quiet against the deep blue night sky. My camera tried to capture it, but it failed in the same way words sometimes fail. The photo caught the shape, but not the feeling. Not the stillness. Not the way the sky seemed endless for a moment. There are certain nights where the world softens a little. Tonight felt like one of those nights. The streetlights glowed below me. The trees turned into dark silhouettes against the fading blue horizon. The power lines stretched across the sky like pencil marks on a page. And there, suspended above it all, was that crescent moon. Small, but impossible to ignore. I think one of the hardest things about being human is realizing how much beauty exists that cannot fully be shared. You can point a camera at the moon. You can ...

The Wild Knows Me It’s strange how a show can reach in and unlock something you didn’t know was buried so deep. I just finished The Untamed on Netflix, and it left me feeling raw—in the best way. What moved me most wasn’t just the characters or the loyalty and chosen family (though that did hit home). It was the way the wild was shown—untouched and vast, not just beautiful but free . It stirred something ancient in me, something autistic and wordless. A longing I rarely get to put into words. Watching it, I felt like the wilderness was calling to me. Not in a metaphorical sense. Literally. Like it was saying: “Come home.” For a moment, I imagined myself in Yellowstone—surrounded by mountains and sky, not needing to explain my silence, my stimming, my feelings that come too fast and too deep. There, I wouldn’t feel out of place. I’d just be . The wild wouldn’t ask questions. It wouldn’t label me. It would just accept me . There’s a kind of belonging in nature that doesn’t ...

A Formal Petition to the Feathered Knights To the noble birds who once called the window outside my room home— I know we’ve had our differences. I’ve grumbled. I’ve complained. I may have even threatened to evict you with muttered curses and half-hearted shoe tosses. Your early morning chirping was not appreciated by a sleep-deprived autistic who wrestles with insomnia and a brain that refuses to shut off. But oh, how the tides have turned. For now, I find myself haunted by a new tenant: the relentless, vibrating, high-frequency Cicada of Doom . Its siren song—made with actual rib bones, by the way—is both biologically fascinating and absolutely torturous to my nervous system. Its buzz drills into my skull with the intensity of a thousand dentist tools on loop. I cannot rest. I cannot think. I cannot even scream because I’m too overstimulated to formulate words. So, to the birds: I take it all back. Your chirps, your fluttering wings, your constant nest rearranging—I would ...