Let Her Be Little

I’ve been told that I have an inability to handle reality at times.

That I am forever childlike.

The hardness in my heartbeats mount with horror films, high volumes, jealousy, pride, and fear in this stark, real world.

We had a hard-water well when I was small

Hard decisions were made in front of my growing mind. Hard words and tough choices.

I remember the softness in my cat’s belly. The silky feel of my mother’s safe arm.

The gentle music of late-night adult parties that soothed me to sleep.

The hard-shrill shrieks of frustrated family drives. The fighting. The waves of empty promises and the hope of change around each corner.

The wailing sirens and hard fears of my physical foundations.

The walls that surrounded me were always changing. Never firm or resolute.

The dark days fall through the gaps in my childhood reel,

Lighter, vignette memories distort truths, to where I’m left with fairies, dense green forests, sun -speckled afternoons on clovers in the Midwest backyards of my youth.

Reading books in the solitude of my bedroom daydreams,

pillows propped my gangly shoulder blades, carefully sorted Halloween candy on my lap.

mermaids and dolls in warm bath bubbles, fantasy worlds of beauty and rescue.

Maybe that frailty is as good a thing as any to cling to.

It has carried me through the dark and lightness of being a human. It has taught me to peer into events closer, to listen for the truth, and to love fiercely.

Maybe in the harsh reality of human nature and of the cosmic course, naivety can be a saving virtue to sail one’s little boat through the seas.

“Let us live for the beauty of our own reality” – Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

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