Secret Hiding Place
A poem for our 8 year old selves
Secret hiding place
Tears and fears came easily at eight years old
Is that true for most of us?
Or was that a product of all that had come before that time?
The trees limbs brushed against the window pane,
begging my overactive imagination to
MAKE A BIG DEAL.
My parents,
close by in actuality,
felt far off
in the way parents do to children age eight.
I would lie in bed, sending telepathic messages to them
to MAKE A BIG DEAL,
Out of my needs
My ideas
My boredom
My psyche quietly begs them
to be less exhausted from their ordinary days,
spent making a life for our family.
In my mind, I gift them skills, forgotten by DNA,
absent for generations,
Each of their hands open
to be in tune with my real and crafted challenges.
Pluck the strings of my soul.
Make a song.
Make a big deal out of who I am and who we are together
The chasm between parent and child, isn’t always intentional,
often it’s simply developmental.
The expanse of years eventually comes together.
We will slowly build bridges of understanding and connection.
Somewhere in my 20s, we will find each other in fuller ways.
We will make that song,
Across phone lines and conflict and comfort and miles.
For now the canyon is wide and confusing
Levar Burton tells me books contain the whole world.
He is accurate and trustworthy.
The distance of a screen separating us
is accurate and trustworthy
in a way parents cannot be, at least for now.
Books settle the big deals of life
Spines and pages,
scratch and sniff scholastic bookmarks are
Safety
Security
A Nest
They are the background music my small self needs
to believe one day we will make something together.
I open the cover,
believing this weighty, firm item can hold
every fear and every tear
And I start to read.
Thanks to my friend,
, for continuing on the journey of our poetry project with The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry.