.
For
Once
Stand down
And guide me
Through this pantomime
Of old improvised distasters
Amalgamating in real time to create a start,
Or start to create another
End to cycle through
Next time 'round
With more
To
Lose
.

For the lucky, a million chances are granted
before their first day sleeps.
Unnoticed - mostly unspoken to the
screaming, restless, 'just wont settle' infants -
they are to be carried on the shoulders of  
protectors and handed down as time presents.

The chance to grow attached to that first teddy-bear.
The one in the attic with just one eye and
an off-white coat of the softest fur;
It holds all the heat from the nights you
nuzzled, before your imagination was clipped;

To wear your first little booties and
plod your first steps holding fingertips sky high;

To run headlong into the edge of a table
you could fit under but a day before;

To cry with your face scrunched up
and your eyes closed, mouth hanging ajar, after
falling from your bike;

And the chance to be embraced and told it will all
be okay by those same protectors, then handed another chance
with one less stabilizer.

Now let's replace the embrace with a thought -
For her;

Her protectors couldn't carry her chances.

When she awoke and filled her lungs
the chances handed down were a cold plastic bag and a
chance encounter with a passer by on the Steelstown Road:

Her chance at a first day, unnamed.

Given half a chance I would give her all of mine.

A seat at the precipice -
Stained and rusted -
Weathered by decaying leaves
Fallen inside the boundaries;

A caste to live within,
Without tight-knotted
Morals on wrists -
A place of slow progress

And little growth
To foster little changes
Meant to brace a wall
Built of shortened breaths.

.

Blurred hibiscus
Sit alongside the
Bravest boy in
New York but
Offer nothing of
The judgement
He feels in his heart.

Sitting on the
Red brick steps
Of a porch which
Opens to the world
He pours himself
Through the focused
Lens of a life changer.

.