Second Prize: Autism in girls, Isobel Glover

Isobel Glover

Second Prize, 2026 Tower Poetry Competition, 'A Riddle'

Autism in girls

            i. Inhale; consumption

            We gather, drawstring-tight,
like a convent of kestrals,
flown in on morning light.
             Veiled by the canteen’s
kindly din;
we crow, and bray.
Asking:
             Do you know what he said to me, yesterday?
                                                                  Do you understand?
The silk passage that                          slips
through my Sister’s teeth? Her story gleams on the tongue.
Inflection rises; an imitation.                       Intonation is traced out, as an isobar,
            steady, curling, over our mapped language. We study it. Unravel it. Root out
all                 rot.                    Digging up conversational graves; analysing what’s gone.
            Together, we parse the            context. Gossip writhes with
such semantics. We cite our sources.
Review, assess.
Don our lab coats; the convent bows their heads.
            We speak in our literal rhyme,
so        linear; sweet to the ear -
we bleed our fingers on      brine,
clawing
at such         saliferous truths.
              It’s bloody work,
to           dig      up,      to        discern
the right answer, to an adret boy’s simple
observation. Resolve that which is not a riddle. It’s our work, this sacred
            act     of clarification.

         ii. Exhale; conversation

         How do I put this?           We’re girls of
Latin; kestrels who                   speak only
in their         canticles. This school’s own sphinxes.
                                                                      Do you understand?
What we’re saying?       Semantics congeal under our fingertips,
bright language netts around our wrists.
          Ours is a lexis of restraint.                         Mortua
          lingua;
limited movement. We’ve
stones on the tongue. We’re caught,
cloistered, smiling in        parody,
          eyes kept soft,
though yours is a
cutting
gaze.