When
I was a girl
I was broken
by your hand.
Was it like
breaking a daisy?
The ones that grew
up the street,
that I gathered up
in my arms,
but never made it
home intact.

I watched you
break me
from lowered eyelashes,
they swept my cheeks.
Never make a
sudden move,
never show that
I am here.
But it’s true,
I was not there.

My mind
taken flight,
hidden
in the tombstones
in the little graveyard
I bravely walked by,
every day.
Fresh new flowers bunched
here and here on the grass.
The dead flowers,
windswept, broken,
cried out to me.

And there,
there was my tombstone,
In my house,
in my bed,
in my fear.
The fear, so reliable,
the one thing
I can always count on.
The flight from
the center to the shadows.

I was broken
in a way that
only a child could see.
I too am a child
since the night that
I took my first flight,
lashes sweeping my cheeks,
frozen in fear.
Loving parents, nearby,
saw nothing,
heard nothing,
did nothing.
There was
no broken glass,
in that soft turn
of the door handle.

Saw nothing,
heard nothing,
did nothing,
failed to see me
breaking
a little more
every time,
over time,
frozen in time,
like the graveyard flowers
dried from the crisp night air,
breaking apart into
a million little pieces
of me.

(c) Sandi Adams
02.14.2013