I remember a time when we were one, when we were what they called "whole,"
a budding self wandering the forest of childhood in quiet awe

and I remember the hunters.

the words, locked doors in the cold, and worse;
how they struck her through the heart, how her legs gave way,

how she crumpled to the ground and bled
and bled
as the forest withered around her.

And now we are here, tired children of the dried-up husk,
stumbling through a world that sees us as deluded, dangerous,
or perhaps, at best, a child's game.

We are weary. We are wounded, we are sharp and jagged edges,
but we are also so much more.
We have become so much more. No simple collection of fragments,

but the family we never had -
the family we deserved.

Together, I know we'll find our place in the sun,
unbreakable as many as we never were as one.