Charlotte Amelia Poe How To Be Autistic releases September 19th, pre-order now! Mon, 19 Aug 2019 19:10:25 +0000 en-US hourly 1 you bleed gold Mon, 19 Aug 2019 19:10:23 +0000 Continue Reading]]> ‘you bleed gold’ is now live on Youtube to celebrate being one month away from the release of How To Be Autistic!

“You’ve been quiet when you should have been loud. You’ve bent at the waist and held tight to your stomach when you should have stood tall. Looked away when you should have made eye contact. Stayed when you should have left.

You’ve been violent to yourself when you should have been tender. You’ve been tender to others when you should have been violent. A century of rage and you misdirect, misinterpret, aim and fire, self destruct.

You’ve been ugly when you should have been shining. You’ve – well, you’ve never quite figured out a way to be beautiful. You’ve traced the line of your nose and how it twists off to one side, and you’ve hated yourself.

You’ve been a thousand murmured rumours and none of them true. You’ve been a single truth untold. You’ve held your tongue and bitten your lips and the taste of blood is copper in your mouth.

You’ve been a forest fire when you should have been an ember. And, oh, for so long you were an ember when you should have been a forest fire. You could have burned so bright if you’d have only let yourself.

You’ve been blaming yourself for being small. You’ve become small because of how you blame yourself. You don’t think that possibly it’s not you, that it was never you, that people are cruel because cruelty is power, and people find power more appealing than kindness.

You’ve been wondering why you didn’t leave. Why you didn’t speak up. Why nobody told you that it was wrong, that you were being hurt. You’ve checked your wounds like a list of the dead and found yourself to be a graveyard.

You’ve been walking this world like a ghost. You’ve been barely there, seethrough, and wondered why nobody ever really saw you. You’ve risen from the grave and now you’re a revenant, you howl in the night and shake the beds of those who have wronged you.

You’ve been thinking a lot, lately, about what happened to you. You’ve been trying to remember how it felt to be that child, the one who stared out of windows and waited for a car, waited to be rescued. You feel the ache in the back of your throat, muscle memory, that awful certainty that nobody is ever going to make things okay. You shake with it and you dream about it and you wonder how far you’ll have to run before it can’t catch you anymore.

You’ve been through hell, and the ash is still smudged on your face. You have broken every bone and healed each one jagged and wrong. You are not the shape of the person you were before it happened, you are something new, forged from a war you didn’t sign up to fight, but that, somehow, you won.

And no, it doesn’t feel like a victory. That’s the secret of war. There are winners and losers, but ultimately, the cost outweighs the medals, the parades, the written history of battles and triumph.

You wonder, if perhaps, you didn’t survive, so much as live through it. Whether there’s a distinction there. People try to make this a martyrdom, and they try to make it sacred. People try to worship at the words you’ve spat, angry and afraid, and they try to make them beautiful. And you think – I am not special.

And that is the thought that scares you the most. Just because your voice is the loudest, you know (god you know), that doesn’t mean it’s unique. Whispers in the dark, a shared history, we have been there too, and it hurt us just as much, if not more, they say, they say, they say. Dream of silver days when nobody will find these words and find themselves within them.

I see you, you shout. I see you, and I know you, and we all bleed gold, glinting in the sun as it streams from us, more precious than blood, because blood is spilt without thought, whereas this – what has been done, what will be done again and again because goddammit, power and cruelty will always win over compassion, the gold we bleed paths the streets and makes them glisten and people tread over it and don’t seem to realise the cost of it.

You are held together with spit and glue, and you fight with fists and words. Tell you something though, I think maybe you’re stronger than you know. Because the world could have made you heartless, could have made you cold, could have made you just the same as those who hurt you. But you kept something, secret and small, safe and sound, yet big as a soul, big as big can be.

You kept yourself. You kept your kindness. You kept your empathy. And yes, you kept your spite, because sometimes you need that too. You live in spite of, and to spite, and you live quiet or loud, soft or violent, but dammit, you live wonderfully.

And if you think you don’t, if you think they really broke you, if you think, no, you left yourself behind somewhere along the way – I disagree.

You’re not who you were. And you’re allowed to mourn that loss. Because it is a loss. But also know that as long as you breathe, as long as you stay here, as long as you’re in this world, you’re living proof that no matter how bad it got (and I know it got bad, I know, I know) you stood back up. So you know the taste of blood in your mouth, you know the colour of bruises, you know the way words ring in your ears for days or weeks or months or years. Soldier, you fought your war, and you’ve come home, and sometimes that is everything.

They don’t hand out medals. There are no parades in the streets. They don’t mark the anniversary of the final battle. Maybe nobody even knows about it apart from you.

But sometimes, and you might not even realise, you’ll brush past someone in the street who has fought that war too. Who has the scars and the head full of nightmares just like you. You’ll pass them by, and they’ll pass you by, and you’ll both keep living, keep walking forward, ever forward, until you can barely remember what it sounded like when the bombs dropped.

And that’s not nothing.”

]]> 0
With a little over a month to go… Fri, 16 Aug 2019 22:51:28 +0000 Continue Reading]]> Firstly, I’d like to apologise for not writing lately, I wish I had a better excuse than just being wildly distracted (and more than a little stressed and anxious!).

We’re just over a month from the release of How To Be Autistic, which is exciting and terrifying in equal measure. Things are starting to fall into place with regards to media and the like, I did my first interview the other day, I don’t think I’ve ever talked that much in my life before! I feel so incredibly unqualified to answer the questions I’m asked – and incredibly lucky that people actually want to hear what I have to say, it’s a very weird position to be in, and I hope to use it to benefit people as best I can. The whole point of HTBA, after all, is to not just raise awareness, but push towards real change and progress, as well as offering people who have for so long felt othered a home, somewhere to belong.

My anxiety is making this all very difficult for me, as are the stress migraines that are making the days very hard to get through, but we soldier on! This is a life-changing moment, and I want to make the most of it. I am aware of the privilege I have, and I don’t want to waste it.

The book launch party is on September 11th, and I look forward to seeing everyone who helped make the book possible. A book is not one person’s work, but the work of dozens of people, all of whom, I’ve found, are lovely and kind and generous.

I am working on a new spoken word piece, so far I’ve written the script and recorded the audio and just need a few supplies to film the visuals. I’m very proud of it so far, and hope you will like it too. When it’s done, I’ll be sure to post it here.

The future is unknowable, except that in just over a month, my life will change, and I will be a published author. Which is all I ever wanted to be. This isn’t the path I envisaged I’d take, back when I was seven years old, but I’m glad I’m here now, and I’m excited for whatever happens next.

You really can’t predict these things, nor can you predict the kindness of strangers and the weird twists of fate that put you in positions like this. All you can do, I suppose, is keep looking for the opportunities, entering the competitions even when you feel you don’t stand a chance, keep writing writing writing, and yeah, I guess sometimes you have to flay yourself open and write a book about what you find inside.

I’ll try to keep you updated as things get stranger still.

Poe xx

]]> 0
Katie Milburn Is Alive (short story) Thu, 11 Jul 2019 11:32:57 +0000 Continue Reading]]> I, Katie Milburn, am alive. I’ve been awake nearly two days and I’m pretty sure I want to die, but I’m also pretty sure that right now, in this moment, I’m alive. 

So that’s terrifying. 

Lots of things are terrifying, I think. Which is kind of the problem. I mean, look at the universe. Nobody really understands the beginnings or the ends of it, or if it even has beginnings and ends, and I think, well, isn’t it kind of subjective?

Like, before I was born, hell, even for several months after, nothing really existed for me until something tipped over and I was a person and then my universe began and I was conscious and real and burdened with an entire life I never asked for. 

And then you think well, I’m going to end one day, and then the universe might as well end too because I won’t be around to experience anything beyond that. 

So I’m not saying we’re all universes, bumping into each other and occasionally making out with each other, whatever, except I kind of am, and if that makes me big headed I don’t really care, I’m a universe, universes are big. 

Universes are also full of stuff. I mean, they look empty but there’s still a bunch more stuff than you realise tucked away in the pockets, you know? And so we’re born and we start collecting stuff like a snowball running downhill and some of it is good stuff, hopes and dreams and days on the beach, but there’s a lot of bad stuff too and that’s where you find your own personal planet destroying meteors. 

The first time you get dumped. The first time you realise that nobody’s going to save you and you’re really in this alone. The first time you cry just because existing, just existing, is really hard and nobody’s telling you how to do it but everybody expects you to know. Each meteor hits and breaks you into fragments and your universe gets all cluttered up with these fragments until it’s impossible to traverse without getting bombarded with them, and if you’re mixing your universe with someone else’s you have to try to figure out how much of the detritus you want them to absorb. 

So I’ve been awake nearly two days now and I’m pretty sure my universe is going to end soon because it feels all stretched at the seams and I’m tired. I’m so tired. I’m like some kind of absent god who’s just popped in to check on her creation and it’s like, Christ, you know, someone made a mess of the place. 

Except it’s my mess. Well, some of it. We collect other people’s messes too and add them to our own and eventually we can’t tell whose is whose and maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be but maybe we lose a bit of ourselves every time that happens because I don’t think I like the person other people’s messes have made me into. 

I’ve probably returned the favour tenfold, but it’s not really something you can measure. I’m kind of not a great person really, but again, how do you measure that? Is anyone keeping score? Besides, this is my universe, and I’m allowed to be slightly biased in favour of myself. Even if I hate myself, I’m allowed to, because I am my self. 

So my universe is full and empty and I’m tired and I want to die because I think then it’d be black, like, proper pitch black, like all the suns have gone out at once, like, blowing out all the candles and making one giant wish and that is for some damn peace and quiet. Quit bumping into me with your universe sized dilemmas and desires, I’m too old and too everything to care. I am trying to make space and you are making that very hard to do. 

Not a specific you. Everybody. Everybody just stop orbiting for a moment and let me breathe. 

I think it’d be nice to be very small, with very small problems, but I’m not, and I don’t know a damn soul who is. So please bear with me whilst I scream into the void a little because I have a name and I’m alive and I’m bursting and I’m spit and glue and recycled atoms and that terrifies me and I think I’m allowed to be terrified because endings are scary, even happy ones, because they make things stop, and I want that but going from infinite to the end of a sentence is a bit of a mindfuck. 

So it’s five in the morning in my universe and in a bunch of other people’s universes too and I guess that’s kind of a comfort because it means a bunch of other people have watched the sun rise with grit in their eyes and bile in their throats and they’ve all thought, damn, it’d be a lot easier if I didn’t have to do this anymore. 

And some of them won’t. Boom, whimper, whatever – universes stop existing everyday. People decide the mindfuck is worth it, becoming past tense is worth it, and I think – like I can hear the birds singing and there’s objectively a finite amount of times I’m going to hear that and that number is unknowable unless I’m the one who makes that decision and quite frankly I’m an idiot and shouldn’t be put in charge of that kind of thing. 

I am big and small and full and empty and tired and awake and alive because the only other option is to be nothing at all and I think that might be worse. 

At least, like, it’s enough to make me pause. 

Universes end. People end. I will end. Full stop. No more words. 

And I’m damn tired. 

But dammit and fuck and a million other expletives because the universe, my universe and the universe we all bumble around in, it’s this utterly ineffable thing and that’s really frustrating. If it made sense, you could approach it logically, but it doesn’t, so you can’t. 

It’s just dumb and weird and everyone just seems to accept that or at least manage to tamp down the fear enough to go about showering and driving to work and brushing their teeth and just – all this stuff and the universe ticks on and it’s all mad, isn’t it?

So, dear reader, dear fellow universe, I want to die sometimes. Because I’m tired. Because I’m scared. Because I don’t know enough about anything. Because because because. 

But none of the becauses are big enough to topple a universe. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I spin wildly outwards always and my insides churn. I listen to bird song. I don’t sleep. 

And I write these words and our universes collide like oil slicks on the surface of the ocean, shimmering and iridescent and beautiful and maybe a disaster too. 

And if there’s a point to this, to any of this, it’s that. In being human, whatever that means, we are beautiful, and we are disasters, and we are and are and are for as long as we can be. 

I, Katie Milburn, am alive. And so are you. What are the odds of that, I wonder? 

Of all the universes you had to bump into, you bumped into mine.

]]> 0
What You Protect (short story) Fri, 05 Jul 2019 23:13:37 +0000 Continue Reading]]> He had been guarding the object for a very long time. Long enough, and deep enough, down deep below the groaning, shifting plates of the earth, where the ground beneath his feet was warm to the touch, this hollowed out nest of ash and ancient whispers, he had stood, he had waited. His knuckles had grown large and nobbled, his knees creaked a little more and moved a little less easily. His beard, long since white and wiry, hung in intricate braids, braids knotted with the patience and shaking of arthritic hands, made beautiful by time and only time, this never ending amount of time, that kept him here, withered face flushed with the heat of it, the earth rumbling above and below him as though the angels and the demons were minutes away from all consuming war.

He remembered sunlight, though his eyes would fail to see it so clearly now, foggy and whitened, the blue of them hidden by the clouds of his years. Yet, they could see well enough still, to protect, to defend, should someone find their way down to where he was, and true enough, he had defended his post well throughout history, if the littering of bones strewn not so far from his feet was any indication.

The object had never moved, had never broken. It was older than he was, older than the earth itself, they’d told him, and infinitely more valuable. It was the last of something beyond his understanding, beyond what the world had been ready for, and it was his honour to be its silent protector.

Though not so silent, at times. He would sometimes find himself, his voice rusty and barely there, as though it had been worn away by lack of use, muttering to the object, stroking it, telling it about the stories he’d heard as a child, the wars that had been won and lost, and how it had felt to walk on dewy green grass, all of it he’d recounted over the years, like a slow flowing stream breaking through rock.

When his breathing caught and his lungs turned air into bitter coughing fits, he’d lean a hand upon the object, feeling almost a sense of comfort from the contact, as though he were not as alone as he was. Though truth be told, he’d never felt alone, not really. There was a presence to the object, something beyond words, like there was another soul down at the core of the earth with him, easing the sense of isolation, protecting him from the very worst of his thoughts as he stared night after night at the scorch burnt rock above him.

He knew, deep in his bones, bird thin and hollowed out, that his guardianship was coming to a close. Nobody had been sent to replace him, and he thought that maybe they’d forgotten, those that walked on the earth rather than under it, lifting their faces up to the warm caress of sun beams, maybe they’d forgotten that there had been a promise made, that below them stood a man who protected something so sacred, so rare, that there wasn’t a name for it.

If he was to die, he was glad it would be in this cave, in this carved out cavern, where the air was still and time could have been too, was it not for the way his skin wrinkled as he flexed his hands, the way his back curved his body downwards, as though urging him to lay down and rest.

And gods, how tempting it was to rest now.

He found himself with a callused hand resting on the object, fingertips brushing over the smooth curve of it, barely able now to reach to stroke the ash that rested on its point from the top of it. It sat upright in a nest of bone and coal and the kind of treasures men dreamt of owning, their gleam not yet dulled. He had never been tempted, because the gems and the stones and the gold did not belong to him, and to take it would be a crime beyond any other he could commit. He had his honour, even if nobody else was left to hold him accountable. He had himself, and the promise he had made. So, he rested his hand against the curve of the object, and talked in the tongue of his grandfather before him, syllables that bent and swirled together like a song.

The object warmed beneath his palm, as it always did, and it felt like he was being listened to. He sank to the ground, leaning against it, eyes closing as an all-encompassing weariness took him over.

He had done a good job, hadn’t he? They may have forgotten him, up there, where the sky was blue and the continents had shifted, the creak crack of their own bones mirroring his own. He’d done a good job. It was okay, then, if he rested for a little while.

To be a guardian is to love, beyond your own being. And he had been a very good guardian. As his eyes closed and his breathing grew more ragged, the object warmed, the fire within it already mourning him.

It was with sightless eyes and a still heart that he would have seen the creature that emerged, its soul borne from the love he had bestowed upon it. For years and years, millennia, the rise and fall of empires above, he had nurtured it, and it had grown, the very last of its kind, until finally, when he had given it everything, it had risen from his ashes.

The object cracked piece by piece, like it had been struck from within. A shell, then, and then, life, blood warm and fierce, scales black as the coal that had cradled it, eyes white as the ash that shifted as it took its first tentative steps.

The cavern was large, but when it spread its wings for the first time, the creature found itself cramped. It wanted to fly. It wanted to see the skies the man had told it about.

It pawed the ground where the man lay. It nuzzled at his face, first in confusion, and then in understanding.

It walked on legs that felt too new to where the cave gave way to a long and winding tunnel. Upwards promised the world, but also the loss of the only home it’d known.

At the mouth of the tunnel, the creature looked back. The man’s body looked so small compared to his stories, his dedication, his love. It wasn’t him, not really. It was something that had once been him, but he was gone now. Where he had gone, the creature did not know, but he was not in that empty shell any more so than the creature was in the object anymore.

The creature filled the cavern with its flame, scorching everything molten hot. It would burn for a thousand years, until nothing remained, the treasures and the man devoured by the heat of it.

If the creature could cry, perhaps it would have done. But it couldn’t.

Instead, it took the first steps into the tunnel, and then the next steps, leaving the fire burning behind it, daring itself, with every step, to dream of sunlight on its scales and the world its guardian had talked of – confused and broken and happy and sad and warring and peaceful and corrupt and kind. It wanted to see everything.

And, for the kindness the man had given it, the years he had guarded it, it wanted to be seen. It wanted the world to see, in all its beautiful and terrible glory, the monstrous god that tender empathy could birth.

It would step into sunlight, and it would marvel. And so, the people would marvel too. And they would see love.   

]]> 0
Author Copies Of How To Be Autistic Arrived Today! Tue, 25 Jun 2019 18:12:17 +0000 Continue Reading]]> I am so absolutely delighted to tell you that the author copies for How To Be Autistic arrived today, and they are GORGEOUS. I always wanted HTBA to be a beautiful art object in its own right, and it is. I’m so, so proud of all the hard work everyone has put in to making it as amazing as it is.

Processed with VSCO with a4 preset
Processed with VSCO with a4 preset
Processed with VSCO with a4 preset
Processed with VSCO with a4 preset
Processed with VSCO with a4 preset

I’m so excited that soon I’ll be able to share HTBA with you all, September 19th really isn’t that far away now! You can preorder it from pretty much anywhere that sells books, international and all. I’m so, so proud of this little book and really hope it can do a lot of good. Thank you for coming with me on this journey.

]]> 0
small reprieve 8 Tue, 11 Jun 2019 11:46:37 +0000 Continue Reading]]> My god, did anyone ever tell you
How you kick in your sleep?
Or that you snore like you smoke
Forty a day?
You keep me awake, and I would
Begrudge you that –
Were it not for the opportunity
To watch you dream.

]]> 0
100 Days Until HTBA Is Released! (video) Mon, 10 Jun 2019 19:08:09 +0000
]]> 0
How To Be Autistic – Pre-Order Now! Mon, 29 Apr 2019 22:18:15 +0000 Continue Reading]]> htbainsta





Amazon UK:

Amazon US:


Barnes & Noble:

Myriad Editions (publisher):

]]> 0
turn your back on mother nature Sat, 27 Apr 2019 01:08:13 +0000 Continue Reading]]> I will be the hollow tree

Standing in the forest sunlight dappling through my leaves

My insides exposed for all to see

Yes, I think I like that


I will be the beach cave

Drip drop of salt water like sound colouring sight

Stand inside me and ask what made me

Yes, I think I like that


I will be the long abandoned burrow

Once home to the woodland’s guardian souls

Half caved in and morning dew damp

Yes, I think I like that


I will be this body

Staples digging into flesh

Hospital bed and smell of antiseptic

Yes, I think I like that

]]> 0
get over it Fri, 26 Apr 2019 01:05:15 +0000 Continue Reading]]> I haven’t felt safe in over twenty years

That feels strange to admit

There’s a casual acceptance to a lifetime of fears

“Oh, come on, get over it.”


Maybe I don’t want this but I don’t know the alternative

Like I’ve been blinkered and I can only see straight ahead

It tells me this is the only way to live

“Stay home, stay safe, stay in bed.”

Traitorous to the last I tell myself it’s better

To live a life that’s infinitely lesser

Because I can’t breathe and I want to go home

But what is a home if you still feel alone?

]]> 1