Scared, not scarred, by them
My daughter had one last night
She is a regular with nightmares
She is six, so anything not featuring pink stuff would be classified as a nightmare
Most of them had me in mortal peril
But this one was different
She was chased, she groggily recounted
By big bad men, Four of them
Out of a building
They had caught her and started beating her
She was sobbing in her sleep
She asked me to play her a song to help her sleep
Believe me, when I say my heart wasn’t broken
My heart breaks when she is hurt
Hurt by mean words, mockery and indifference
My heart breaks when she smiles and puts on a brave face
Marches right back into the world
My heart wasn’t broken
Something just died inside of me
It resembled Hope
Hope that she would grow up in a world better than mine
As it died bloodless, a death rattle climbed up my throat
I shut my mouth, it was constricting the cords
Having risen with the bile
These words are not my vent
These words are my screams
Imagine a face, tight and contorted, eyes shut, hands clamped near the ears
SCREAMING
At me, you and this merciless world
At monsters who inhabit them
At the thought of a child living the nightmare
At idiots who still search for things to blame
At the so called society with its short term memory
At a system where you live in the perpetual illusion of safety
At me, you and this helpless world
You can take your hands off your ears now…
Am done screaming
