Last week, the National Autism Association (NAA) shared a heartfelt poem by a 10-year-old boy living with autism spectrum disorder on its Facebook page, but they never expected it would go viral.

The boy, Benjamin Giroux, has Asperger’s syndrome — a form of autism. On April 7, he came home from Cumberland Head Elementary School in Plattsburgh, New York, more excited than ever to do his homework.

Photo: Facebook

To celebrate National Poetry Month, his fifth-grade teacher at Cumberland Head Elementary School in Plattsburgh, New York, asked her students to write a poem about themselves, beginning every few sentences with “I am.”

What he wrote has taken the internet by storm and it’s making a lot of people very emotional.

In his poem, Benjamin writes…

“I am odd, I am new I wonder if you are too I hear voices in the air I see you don’t, and that’s not fair I want to not feel blue I am odd, I am new I pretend that you are too I feel like a boy in outer space I touch the stars and feel out of place I worry what others might think I cry when people laugh, it makes me shrink I am odd, I am new I understand now that so are you I say I “feel like a castaway” I dream of a day that that’s okay I try to fit in I hope that someday I do

I am odd, I am new.”

Please SHARE this touching poem with your friends and family!

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