a butterfly doesn't ask to grow wings

I see strangers on the Internet
talk about healing their inner child.
It made me go inward.
Think
and think
and think.

About little me.
Three, five, seven years old.
What she wore
what she ate
what she watched on TV.

How she danced,
twirled on and on
without a care in the world.

And as I saw her in my mind's eye
and felt her in my soul,
my heart was filled with a Great and Terrible Sadness.

Oh, how I've failed her!
I've abandoned her laugh
her warmth
her light.

I traded her valiance for fear,
her voice for silence.
Her smile and bright green eyes
for a dull film over too-pale features.

Oh, my poor, sweet child.
I am endlessly sorry.
I have failed you.
Failed you.
Failed you.

Those strangers on the Internet
want to heal their inner child.

But now
I wonder...
Can my inner child heal me?

i am an unwilling passenger
upon the vessel of time

There are broken things
               I can never fix—
                         even though
                                I’m older—
      no matter
           how much I know,
my hands are still wounded green
                      with Spring’s earth—

from even before I knew
          the pain of destruction—or
the chaos of a single lie
             (before I knew it was a lie)

when I was crawling on sunset
                  in the tall grass
                       of our backyard,
          silently following
                       my brothers
                           (newly jaded)
                 as they joked in spite
       about our mother’s volatile shouts
from our sky blue house
            of loose and spurring rage.

Setting snow on fire
The suffering, that is desire.
Burning, never needing starter
Only growing larger,
Not even wavered
By the laps of water

I drew stick figures
things were simple

in a pencil world
mistakes were erased
you could start over

but an inchmeal awareness nagged
- the sky isn’t gray, it’s a liquid blue

but crayons were complicated
you couldn’t erase things
mistakes were irrevocable.

and there were 148 colors in the big box
keeping them in rainbow order was work.

growing up is hard