Lost

You were the gods of our childhood. As soon as your voice shook the earth beneath us, you must have known you were also turning the hourglass. I imagine our tiny hands, the fine pink blush beneath our minute window-like fingernails. I know you looked down upon a head like an bird's egg, delicate and whole. How did you not reach out your hand to feel the soft down of our hair? There is a particular smell to a small hot child, chest heaving from the frenzied joy of running wild. Didn't you want to lean down, pick up the wandering child and whisper a sweet word into their tiny shell-like ear?

Instead, your hand seized the delicate wrist, squeezed until tears slipped from tight-shut eyes. Your rage quickened and grew along with our tiny jerking hearts and bodies. Your voice, a dangerous whisper, raised the hair on our arms and necks, or as a roar like a blind waterfall, rang in our ears for hours.

You laughed, liquid and dark, while we burned with sorrow and fear. Blazing white hot, your violence melted steel until even our hearts were soldered. We hid behind a flimsy paperboard door, tiny shoulders shaking. With time, your very name became a curse.

The Little Boy Lost

William Blake

from Songs of Innocence, 1791

“Father! father! where are you going?

O do not walk so fast.

Speak, father, speak to your little boy,

Or else I shall be lost.”

The night was dark, no father was there;

The child was wet with dew;

The mire was deep, & the child did weep,

And away the vapour flew.