My Inner Child, One of Several

He’s 5, still is, after all these years. He sits and waits, frightened. He feels hollow. Life is too lonely now to have future. I know he is there, I know right where he is. I see him. What he knows, what others don’t, is that there is no escape. There is no future. When others do tentatively reach toward him, it is as through the bars of a cage. But in the intervening years, I have come from that distant spot in his cage through the ether that he can not discern to the present, and have discovered a great secret: I now know the way! And so I start to slip back through mists that cloud everything. Mists no one else can follow. I carry music with me. I carry dance. I carry words to speak. I carry form, beauty. I carry images. I carry sensuality. I carry intimacy. I carry caresses and loveliness. I carry promise. I know what this boy needs. I know the pieces that have been and will be torn from him. And the key, the key to his heart, is that all that I carry is meant for him. They are the nature of his heart They are the future of his heart that has been eclipsed. What I carry to him is the knowledge that there is a way now for him. The mist is cool, thick, but it is not as dangerous as the original journey. Not so anxious, tense, frightened. When I see him finally, he looks up. I am on the inside of his cage. He knows who I am. As I reach for his hand he puts it in mine knowing that he can. Knowing that this too is ordained. Not knowing what. But knowing that he will follow to the land I lead him to. Too young to understand all that means. Too young to even know how to question. Just knowing that I have, at long last, come back for him, that at long last someone, will take him, to future. Dec 2011