Craving For Baby Stars

Children growing old and fading innocence shattered with the curse of abandon frozen between the first stage of a baby's breath and navel, desperate to live in real homes after years of return and exchange thrown from garbage to luggage… foster home mother, unit mother, nun mother, volunteer mother… what’s a mother? And I watch broken toddlers come and go some small, a few tall, others weak, most climbing inside tears or curling inside fire nonetheless, they are all the same... they just want to be loved as normal kids; and I feel how they crave to belong in a nest of stars without love’s regret. I cradle their dreams with healing balm pouring grains of future's summer dreams, as I watch them come and go: these, my “children” fly with kindling hope playing as if to forget the numbness of dragged pain steady still in the passing of riddled uncertainty… "When will you come back?" "Am I pretty or not?" "Will my nightmares stop?" And I watch broken toddlers come and go changing, always changing my own truth… Oh there’s so much more I need to accept, for I can never have one of them as mine being single and mostly alone , like these children... wanting a family. ......................... For the toddlers of an orphanage where I volunteer as a counselor. ............................... The Poet's Ache Contest / Sponsor: Greg Barden Re- submitted 8/1/2017