Sorry to my inner child
That I never allowed you to bloom like brave red flowers thriving in adversity
Instead, I watched pedophiles bend your stalk and plucked your petals like a thief in the night
Stripping you of your innocence and beauty
Metal blades stealthily misappropriating your world of untouched treasures.
Sorry to my inner child
For the times I made you feel like dirty rags,
easily disposable and undeserving of hearing the words “I love you” and “You are enough”
Sorry to my inner child that I only entreated you to treats of anger,
bitterness, rejection and neglect like children playing “trick or treat” on Halloween
Woefully those were the only hand-me-down toys my mother had to pass onto me
from her generation and they became my best friends.
Sorry to my inner child
That I was mute by malice to your childhood trauma and loves blackmail
As your smile spewed silly incessant soothing lies of “I am resilient” or “I am strong”
But only fools trust in their own strength, so I never interjected because I was taught
never to question someone who blew his own trumpet or toothed his own horn
Because pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.
Now and in this moment
I bend my knees at your mercy as I long to be mitigated of childhood treachery
And to be released on my own recognizance as my final plea
like every criminal caught in the act is not guilty.
I want to be afraid of the darkness again
I want us to go back to the good old days.
—
This Poem was published in the June 2024 edition of the WSA magazine. Please click here to download.
Read – Inner Child: An Angel’s Plea – A Poem by Joy Oche – Nigeria
