I can hear a strangled echo

like a voice rings from my past.

A little boy,

caught in the tangle

of branches grown to block his path.

Stifled, set aside and denigrated,

pushed away by lovers getting thin.

Too far from the nature for the nurture.

Fall into another type of limbs.

 

All the love

isn’t really love.

All the words don’t mean what they say.

Impossible

to make every connection;

innocence falls away,

never to be regained.

 

Decades take their toll

as they are wont to,

hopes and dreams

lay dead upon the page.

I hear that cry

echoing in my mind,

that little boy is alive,

somewhere

in there.

 

Surviving all those betrayals

and disappointments,

struggling through the tears

and through the pain.

Innocence, faithfulness and virtue

are alive again.

 

Rescuing my inner child

from the hellish place I put him in.

Coming back

to look upon his kingdom;

it turns out all of this was his

and I a mere custodian.

 

 

HG – 2019