Broken

The long, sustained dream of my happy childhood was snapped,
before and after pieces felt and mourned at far too young an age.
A broken heart, the unseen inner portion of a secretly broken body,
brutalized by a teen boy who really should have known better.

He lured my six year old self to a garage roof hideaway, sheltered
by surrounding trees and vines, with the heady promise of friendship,
unseen. When he’d finished with me blood was cleaned from my legs,
and away I was sent, on my little banana seated bicycle back home.

My solitary soul squeezed itself down into an inner oblivion, to forget,
to move on, to determine to myself to live, my loving family in no way
to blame for my brokenness, yet all the while I knew at far too tender
an age that evil really does exist, and can look handsome to the eye.

Tracy Plath