Building forts with blankets, planks, chairs, tables, or the top of a bureau in a window
Sitting in a tree, leg dangling from the branch lost in the pages of a delicious adventure
Corners of the playground with one friend, a private club
Pages of journals and lazy summer afternoons at a coffeeshop or laying in the grass
Alcoves in a grove in Capitol Park
Camping in the deep woods off long-abandoned roads
Hiding from myself
Lost in my mind, my emotions, my experience
Trying to reclaim that part of me
that hid so long ago
from the monsters and dungeons
of abuse and abandonment
from the fear of connecting
with the one person who reached out to help
from the shame of choices made
at an age that was too young to comprehend their gravity
from the assumption that the world knew that I didn’t deserve the love and acknowledgement that I craved
from knowing that all of these beliefs were based in lies, but feeling powerless to rise above them in the face of the latest crisis
from acknowledging my own value and giving myself the love that I crave…
A human heart eclipsed in the shadows of misguided dreams
blinks in the bright light of possibility
and tentatively reaches out
instead of hiding
in the magick of the word..