A Little Boy Again
When she ignores me,
I am suddenly small,
a little boy again,
kneeling at the edge of a world
too vast to hold my cries.
I am pulling at the hem of her silence,
whispering, shouting,
"Look at me. Just look at me."
Her absence feels like my mother’s back,
turned as she stirs a pot
too deep to see the bottom of,
her hands busy with everything
but the fragile weight of my longing.
I am that boy again,
holding up a picture I drew,
lines crooked, colors bleeding—
"Is it enough? Am I enough?"
But she does not turn,
and I swallow the answer
like a stone in my throat.
I thought I left that boy behind,
buried him under years of growing up,
of pretending to be whole.
But her indifference calls him back,
and there he is,
clinging to my chest,
his small hands trembling,
his voice breaking:
"Why won’t she see me?"
And I realize,
it is not her I am pleading with.
It is my own shadow,
the echo of a child
still searching for a light
that does not fade.
So I sit in the quiet,
alone with the boy I was,
and I hold him gently.
For even if she never turns,
even if her silence becomes the sky,
I will teach him to stand in the rain,
to love himself without needing
someone else to say, "I see you."
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