They called me Changeling, 

Because it seemed 

I was snatched from my  

Cradle and spirited away to a world 

Where things don’t make sense. 

 

They called me faerie-child back 

In the day 

When the assault of a church bell 

Like a brass hammer pounding 

My skull was enough to sentence me  

For blasphemy. 

 

They called me “wyrd,” in the early years 

For failing to grasp the strange decorum 

Of the human world 

Where your word was not 

Your oath, 

And where every act and intent was couched 

In arcane courtly decorum. 

 

And soon they called me, 

“Aspie,” 
“Autist,” 

“Neurodiverse,” 
A thousand pointless names 

For a stranger to this land, 

A walker in a world that wasn’t meant 

For me. 
 

“Autism stole my child!” they’ve cried, like the 

Ones who bemoaned theft by faeries long ago. 

But if I am stolen, I am stolen 

From a world of my kind, a world I’ll never belong to. 

Nowadays, I have many names but 

You may call me 

Changeling.