Being a child left behind is like wandering through a maze
You know the person you are inside but she's just so far away
The confidence you had before is lost within the haze
Wandering these cold and lonely turns leaves us questioning our place

Meanwhile our peers have moved on to bigger and better things
But instead of the Labyrinth we faced their paths were always straight
We wish that we could be like them, hopeful and secure
Copy how they act, fail, and berate ourselves some more

Truth be told, we're not like them and how could we be?
Instead of the solid roots their families nurtured
We were sown to be a dying tree

Our stumps lie in the shadows of their pillar oaks
Our timber burned to ashes and now we struggle to regrow

As children their lives were predictable and the days remained the same
Whereas our parents were fickle and we always had to change
Adjusting every modicum of who we were to try to win our parents' games
We lost with every roll of the die
Took out loans on our souls and lost the deed to our names

We paid our debts in bruises though we didn't choose to play
When there was nothing for them to abuse and take
We were thrown out among the adults
But we're really just still kids

We flounder with employment and have problems with authority
Our relationships struggle while we search for who we used to be
We're our own mechanics examining every piece
The shards of what remain we question our faith, sexual orientation, and reality

To those outside looking in our reactions are infantile
When really we grew up too fast and have never been a child
So try not to judge us too quickly by our actions
We don't mean to lack self-control or social insights, we really just don't have them

We don't know when you're lying or we think you always are
It's not something that we choose to do
It's not really who we are

We're loving and hopeful underneath
But anyone with this many scars
Has trouble digging down that deep
We love you and we really do care
We're just dealing with the results of parents who were never there.


The girl I once called me..

Among the cluttered archives of my pensive

Lie the memories of a girl whom I once called "me"

Her eyes alight, luminous as the sun

But her figure grows dim with every breath that's drawn

The inquisitive mind's questions lie forever subdued

Her heart's inner-strength quietly accrued

The insistent cruelty claims her will as it's prize

embedding it's malice into her deepest of confines

Riddled with conflict, despair, and her newly affirmed host

Her identity peals, her former self now a ghost

As I cling to the memories of her one innocent form

A searing pain jets through me and I silently mourn

This girl pure as rain, is now all but gone

Her resolve, self-assurance, will, and life won

won by a cruelty too often bestowed on the meek

Teased and berated abused by her critique

She loves on in spite of her impending demise

Rendered by those she loves deeply with her bright eyes

The eyes reflect this battered and weary soul

The eyes that grow dim as she will never be whole

Damaged and beaten by life itself

The irony is uncanny, the toll it takes is real

The shell keeps going a pariah she is now

The inverse of a corpse she is the living dead

Why her heart keeps beating,

or blood flows through her veins,

Why she draws in breath or why she even has a name

is a questioning plea for someone to reclaim

This sobbing young soul from her everlasting flame

A torture so bitter she must suffer alone

A nomad by force with nowhere to call home

when all that is left is the fight she has in her

She's transformed into someone sullen and bitter

Calling out to the world in one last desperate scream

begging to reclaim the girl I once called "me"