Dyslexia Poem Final

=><= (font:"Courier New")[~~[[Dyslexia Poem->Writer]]~~ ~~By Ben Auden Roswell~~]

=><= (font:"Courier New")[Being a writer with dyslexia is an occupational [[dissonance]] I have never quite gotten over.]

=><= (text-size: 1.1) + (font:"Courier New")[It is also a little like I am playing a very hard [[game->good enough]] that I have gotten slightly too good at...]

==> (text-size:1.2) + (font:"Courier New")[[[But crucially not good enough.->But crucially not good enough.]]]

<==> (size: 1.3) + (font: "courier new")[Language became, with some effort, a conscious set of moves which I may enact, a long term strategy or short military campaign on a hex map, where I am successful enough to appear dangerous to any casual combatant but never gifted enough to [[escape the battlefield]] entirely and be offered a chance to recuperate in peace time.]

=><= (size: 1.4) + (Font: "courier")[I am rendered incapable of approaching [[the strategy of English]] casually.]

=><= (size: 1.5) + (font: "courier") + (opacity: 0.9)[I long for a naive or perhaps innocent relationship with language that I have never been able to access, plagued even as a child by the sense that my understanding of letters was some how [[orthogonal]] to that of my peers.]

=><= (size: 1.6) + (font: "courier") + (opacity: 0.8)[And in fact I have spent much of my life working hard to sand off the [[rough edges of non understanding]] that might appear within my language and that might give me away.]

(size: 1.6) + (font: "courier") + (opacity: 0.7)[I cannot regret the long hours I spent trying to explain to English teachers that I did know the difference between it’s and its or there their and they’re and that my mistakes were not lack of knowledge but actually a form of [[face blindness->q1]] that only applied to letters, where related words could show up in my text field dressed as one another and I would never know.]

=><= (size: 1.6) + (font: "courier") + (opacity: 0.7)[[[Have you ever looked at the face of a friend and failed to recognize them?->q2]]]

=><= (size: 1.7) + (font: "courier") + (opacity: 0.6)[[[Or Perhaps looked at the face of a stranger and recognized them for someone for whom they were not?->q3]]]

=><= (size: 1.8) + (font: "courier") + (opacity: 0.5)[[[Or, as a child, taken the hand of a stranger as If they were your parent?->return]]]

=><= (size: 1.9) + (opacity: 0.5) + (font: "courier")[This is my relationship with [[words]].]

=><= (size: 2) + (opacity: 0.5) + (font: "courier")[A relationship of constant [[disquiet]].]

=><= (size: 2.2) + (font: "courier") + (opacity: 0.5)[I have labored to make language [[foldable->combine]] and to make language [[parsable->combine]] and I do not regret this.]

=><= (size: 2.4) + (opacity: 0.5) + (font: "courier") + (text-style: "strike")[But I [[long]].]

(size: 2.4) + (opacity: 0.5) + (text-style:"strike") + (font: "courier")[I long to play [[poetry]] games as children might do.]

=><= (size: 2.6) + (opacity: 0.5) + (font: "courier") + (text-style:"strike")[I long to cast off the consciences of language as [[landscape]].]

==> (size: 2.8) + (opacity: 0.5) + (text-style:"strike") + (font: "courier")[I long to [[wander]] with out fear that upon looking down my map will have changed.]

=><= (size: 3.0) + (opacity: 0.5) + (text-style:"strike") + (font: "courier")[I long to wander in the certainty that topography of my own language will remain [[resolute.->resolute]]]

=><= (size: 3.4) + (opacity: 0.5) + (text-style:"strike") + (font: "courier")[I long to move [[freely->freedom]].]

(size: 3.5) + (opacity: 0.5) + (font: "courier")[(text-style:"superscript")[But] I (text-style:"subscript")[cannot] move (text-style:"superscript")[backwards] into (text-style:"subscript")[linguistic] [[ignorance]].]

(size: 3.6) + (opacity: 0.6) + (font: "courier")[(text-style:"subscript")[I] can (text-style:"superscript")[only] move (text-style:"subscript")[forward] towards (text-style:"superscript")[the] horizon (text-style:"subscript")[line] beyond (text-style:"superscript")[which] language (text-style:"subscript")[again] becomes (text-style:"superscript")[a] playground (text-style:"subscript")[and] where (text-style:"superscript")[one] might, (text-style:"subscript")[though] I (text-style:"superscript")[cannot,] consider (text-style:"subscript")[the] shape (text-style:"superscript")[of] letters (text-style:"subscript")[as] [[playmates instead of opposing forces]].]

(size: 3.8) + (opacity: 0.7) + (font: "courier")[Sometimes I imagine I might lay down arms but I will be asked to read [[cursive]]...]

(size: 4) + (opacity: 0.6) + (font: "courier") + (text-style:"blur")[or not even cursive, just handwriting that has not been printed with the [[upmost regularity]]...]

(size: 4.2) + (opacity: 0.6) + (font: "courier") + (text-style:"blur")[and I will be reminded that there are forms my first language can take that might as well be [[written in code]]...]

(size: 4.4) + (opacity: 0.6) + (font: "courier") + (text-style:"blurrier")[...that in some extremes cases do not even register [[as language]] to me.]

(size: 5) + (opacity: 0.9) + (font: "courier") + (text-style:"blurrier")[I am reminded in these moments that I only struggle on the edge of the world of written language and that I can neither make it fully onto the world-disc nor allow my self to [[tumble off into space]].]

(size: 6) + (opacity: 0.9) + (font: "courier") + (text-style:"blurrier")[ [[My fingers hurt from gripping hard.]] ]

(size: 8) + (opacity: 0.9) + (font: "courier") + (text-style:"blurrier")[ My brain hurts even from a poem which [[I myself have written.->My brain hurts even from a poem which I myself have written.]] ]

=><= (font:"courier")[(size: 10)[I will never write something and have an uncomplicated relationship to it.] (size:0.5)[`[`[[notes]]`]`]]

(font: "courier")[ Many thanks to Caro Asercion, Abe Mendes, Oluwatayo Adewole, and Rowan Davis for thier feedback and advice on this poem. [[Restart from Begining->Dyslexia Poem]]]