For Which I Bleed

Several hours have since past

Since I last counted the days

Since you left my side

Broken, like a crippled child

Alone, a brand new world revealed,

From the womb they get thrust right in

Taught forever about wrong and right

Then they get diagnosed, something is not alright,

 The Parents are by the child, at its side,

As they bury conviction, suppress emotions,

Weeks may pass, months perhaps,

Where their inner anger clouds decision,

Constructing rationale for irrational thought,

And just about this time, these ideas start making sense,

To have no choice, no other option

To feel a sense of failure,

For first the self, and then the child,

Soon it travels to all extensions in your life,

Finally that feeling of failure turns to blame,

It’s everybody else’s fault to which everything falls apart

But the infant does not know, cannot understand,

And derision it is deadly to the touch, deadlier without,

To the child tears and sobs become the sounds and sights of life,

At least to the one they know, they life they will soon recognize,

Themselves as the center, the cause,

Just looking for a reason to be wrong,

But that comfort never comes,

First comes reflection, then a connection, finally an acceptance,

At this point rehabilitation is years long and rivers wide,

For all the misunderstanding they’ve since mastered,

And from each tear they’ve ever crafted,

But these ones are still able for rescue,

Then there are the others,

Those who’ve lost all comfort from a tear,

They’ve since moved to closets in the dark,

Removing so much of what is real,

They create a detached composite, a comfort zone,

All this pain easily evaded, if the parent chose to do what mattered most,

Instead of allowing fear to dictate what matters to them most,

If they only did their job, at least if they tried to,

The outcome much different perhaps, the child’s life changed a fact

The child’s life changed, a fact

In situations like this, for example,

I shed my coat and extend an arm,

Where the simplest of embraces to the most desolate of faces,

May extinguish the residue from a life of harm,

These all and many more, are but a few of the reasons, for which I bleed