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