What I See

A few of you asked me to blog this poem. It's kind of scary putting it into cyber space but what the hell! I added a stanza. It's still being worked on but I wanted it to end with more hope, the hope I feel in my heart.

What I See

What I see,
shattered girl at seven.
Sees daddy make a choice.
Death is more important than them
and he squeezes.
Drywall splatters like
the blood that could have been.
Her two year old brother cries
not because he knows what happened,
because then he wouldn't cry.
He'd be stuck like her,
frozen in the thought
that daddy's favorite girl
has just seen his shame.

What she doesn't know,
what I can't say but want to scream
is that our lives,
separated by decades,
parallels to the point of fear.
That men still do this
after our advancement and promise.
They throw our emotions like banana rinds.
Left to be slipped on for years.
That their pain is worth more than ours,
than the innocent.
And I see it now,
what I see in this girl,
I see in me.

Yes she is damaged,
how could she not be?
But she is not broken.
She should not be excused from life
because she experienced so much already.
This girl is fearless.
Golden skin, sun streaked hair.
She’s knives of of light in my life,
I’m a star lit up in hers.
Because if we can crush it with our bare toes,
the hate and regret in our hearts,
then we can be stronger than he ever was.
We can see everything,
We can see!