I’m frustrated with those who don’t understand abuse.
I weep for those they may hurt,
but I’m conflicted. I praise the Lord.
I thank God for what they’ve missed.

I’m glad they wake up with glow in their eyes and their nights are not full of intrusive flashes of evil.
I’m glad they can make decisions with a radar system that hasn’t been damaged and can go about their day without their nervous system attacking them.
I’m glad they don’t have to choose resilience from forced survival.
I’m glad they can just live.
I’m glad they want to live,

but I hope they understand that I won’t be able to reach them from my alternate universe of knowing.
Darkness is not something that disappears.
It can’t be unseen.
Memories heal, but not until they’ve clawed their way out from the home they made deep inside the soul of our existence.

I’m frustrated with them for not knowing,
but I don’t want them to know
the daydream of anywhere but here,
the tainted wisdom of growing up too soon, the isolated longing in the weary fog of wandering, the disconnection that follows freedom into prison after prison of false escapes,
or the art of disappearing, of becoming
everyone’s stranger.

I’m glad they’ll never know the fainting hope of a child living inside
peering through windows into the world, desperate to feel dead or alive while waiting for what will numb the longing, for the escape that will take her away from herself, for the one who will understand what is impossible to explain, just waiting and waiting, watching lives pass like a movie reel, existing in the in-between.

I’m frustrated with them,
but I’m glad their smiles were real
and they haven’t had to heal from others’ demons.
I’m glad they haven’t wasted precious years waiting to forget that the shade they thought was protecting them from the burning sun was instead teaching them how to survive blistered in the dark, and that the comforting light melting their guards was just a mask for the fire.
I’m glad they don’t have to spend time waiting to forget the truth that breathes inside.
Waiting for what will never come.

I’m frustrated with those who don’t understand abuse, but I love them. I want them to stay
where darkness was never born
because their without
is a gift of hope.
They are the dream I dream.

A dream for my child to not know
the knowing, to live a life alive
existing in a love that already came,
a soul freed from the chains of too much
living in the treasures of what never was
and blessed in the aura of ignorance.