An ode to a wounded child
O tender soul, o innocence defiled,
What cruelties did your youth upend?
Tormented by she who should cherish her child,
Instead her addictions made her your fiend.
Those eyes that should have beamed with a mother's love,
Grew cold and contemptuous in the throes of her vice.
What horrors played out in that hellish dugout,
As her demons unleashed their malicious device?
Did her hands that were meant to soothe and caress,
Leave marks of unspeakable malice instead?
While her harsh words like knives did your spirit suppress,
Leaving your young mind battered and misled.
In that lair where you should have known only grace,
An unholy darkness descended to reign.
Fear and anguish contorting your sweet face,
As her sickness lashed out again and again.
O the trauma embedded, those indelible scars,
That no child should ever have etched on their soul.
Your safe haven perverted by terror's brutal chars,
Stripping security's blanket that should make one whole.
And when at last you were plucked from that pit,
From the hell that your childhood had tragically become,
Other arms tried to embrace and permit
The shattered pieces of you to be some.
But the ghost of those horrors still stalked in your mind,
Echoing torments that never were quieted.
The hyper-vigilance always lurking behind,
As the demons you fled, you could not outride.
For PTSD's insidious grip took its hold,
Replaying those memories of helplessness felt.
The night terrors and flashbacks forever retold,
Of the agonies your young being did pelt.
O you brave, resilient warrior of the soul,
Battered but never defeated by your youth's blight.
The traumas that tried to leave you a haunted, scarred toll,
Could never extinguish your infinite light.
For though she was meant to protect you
Copyright ©
Arianna Stone
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