From childhood’s hour I have not been. As others were; I have not seen. As others saw; I could not bring. My passions from a common spring. Edgar Allan Poe
I wasn’t like the other kids, and I’m glad I wasn’t. It was my otherness that taught me empathy. It was my ability to not agree with what was being taught and preached to me that forced me to stand up for myself, even when that meant I might be ridiculed or shamed.
I am sharing a poem today written during adolescence in the hopes that you may be compelled to purchase your own copy of Hidden In Childhood, an anthology of amazing poets revealing their deepest traumas.
Anthology Description:
From authors featured on NPR, BBC, and the New York Times, and from emerging poets, comes a monumental anthology in which every poem sends shivers down your spine. Childhood’s joy and trauma expressed – with stunning talent and sincerity – by over 150 poets in more than 280 poems. Childhood spaces magnified by the human memory, populated by good and bad, by trips to hell and heaven, in an almost Hieronymus Bosch type of atmosphere. Over 150 voices call you to read this book. Read it. You will learn that childhood never goes away. You will be reminded of the beauty of the seraphim and the need to protect children from any form of abuse. 150 voices knock on your door. Open the door. A chorus of childhoods will tell you that our children need love.
Did I Hold Too Tight?
Did I hold to tight?
Wrapping the shadows of your feet?
Foraging towards your forbidden hieghts?
Struggling to grow
in the crevices of you?
To bend between your ancient thoughts,
To hide beneath ever-changing skin.
I am only inching
in your sunlight.
Clinging during downpours,
a sapling,
delicate and flat against you,
always twining you to me,
interlacing my needy grip
with your sturdy confidence.
For you,
tomorrow will exist,
but my brevity makes
me seasonal.
I’m always the vine,
but never the tree.
© 1998 | K.Hartless
Yard Sale of Thoughts 
Leave a comment