Archive for January 2023

Is this when the training wheels come off?

The moment you let me

cross the road on my own?

I’ll look both ways, I promise.

Left, right, and left again.

You left again.

Just when I thought

I could have you both to myself

after having shared you with strangers.

Oh, how I couldn’t share so much of me

because you were never really free.

Is this when I’m thrown in the pool

to sink or swim?

I never really did learn.

Too afraid to trust you to hold me

with my head just above the water.

I know I never made things easy.

And that never did change.

Too many years of being told I was strange, difficult, weird.

My only protectors

became the two I feared.

Scared of the judgement

I pushed the limits of defiance,

crossing lines just to cross them,

picking fights I’ll never win, but never lose.

All I wanted was to be.

Is this the real cutting of the cord?

The one that was wrapped around my neck when I was born?

Forever grateful you saved my life that day.

But I can no longer be sorry I live my life

my way.

If only I could express

the way my shoulders tense

whenever I’m in your presence,

or the mere thought of having to be.

The pretending gets harder

because it requires me to,

yet again,

do something for you.

I lie awake with questions

I’ll never receive answers to,

hoping to not repeat your mistakes,

a challenge I must take.

It’s not the overbearing nature of your care,

nor the way no thought is left to spare.

It’s there mere fact that when I speak

it’s just a child you’ll always see.