Candle Stub

“Too sad,” they say as they turn away asking if I ever write anything happy Aren’t poets told to write what they know present to people pictures painted with their words of places most are too afraid to go Should I censor myself because it may cause some discomfort to reveal my reality the cruelty I’ve been subjected to from almost the moment I gave my first cry just after three in the morning on the twenty third of May over forty years ago for them to feel for a fleeting moment what I do after all that I’ve been through Would they expect me to stifle my screams if I shattered a bone had been stabbed in the gut with a dagger before being thrown in a ditch like rubbish Would they demand I cover the wound with my hand concealing my viscera from their sight as I smile before stumbling home to tuck it all back inside again stitching it closed with nothing more than a needle and thread the same I use to mend the holes in my clothes by the light cast by a candle stub all I was ever given to find my way in the dark the flame flickering from the fickle wind that constantly changes direction as I pray to gods I don’t believe in that it doesn’t die