Show me a story without loss
and one which deals with pride without the cautiousness
of shame.
Rich with poverty
she could not recall her life
before high school.
On Sundays the church bells
registered the pain of the sinners,
those blameless children,
fondled by cherish leaders,
they could not evade the punishment they proposed.
In therapy,
unfolding the secret of the past,
her origami heart
knows all that what
but,
the unavailability of words
forged by cognitive dissonance,
locked her gaze in the distance.
Still she could hear
the voice of a soothing witness,
from their limbic hide
her tears escaped…
This poem has been previously published in Attachment-New Directions, 15(2) (2021) Reprinted with the kind permission of Phoenix Publishing House.