Tell Me, What is it Like?

First draft, unfinished.

Tell me, Mother,

What is it like to be cradled by a hundred kin,

To grow up in a village where every face is a reflection of your own?

What is it like to belong so deeply

That love is the air you breathe,

The ground beneath your feet?

Tell me, Father,

What is it like to walk amongst brothers on the red road to school,

Where the dust still holds your father’s careless years?

What is it like to share a wild heart with friends,

And know you are a thread woven deep into the cloth?

Let me tell you, Mother

I have never known a Christmas

where the house overflows with voices,

Where I am wrapped in the tight embrace of family,

In those early childhood years.

The ghosts of a sweeter life speak of cousins I will never know,

Of aunts and uncles who live and die by words on the wind.

They tell me I will grow old a stranger

To those who once held you as a child.

Let me tell you, Father,

I shuffled into every room, back bent, head bowed,

So they could not see my maligned face.

I didn’t want to be special, Father, only normal,

So when their laughter came, my laughter came too –

To drown out the noise of a young heart breaking.

The wardens of time gone by still thud in my bones,

And remind me that my childhood was not wild and careless,

But one long, bated breath.