My Poster Child
Six-year-old Sam,
still holding the wide-eyed wonder
of a child who trusts the world,
looks out from the passenger side of the go-cart,
having handed her safety to Austin —
a boy who was rarely there,
and when he was,
he was hardly present at all.
Her trusting brown eyes,
filled with innocent hope,
have already known too much sorrow —
pushing the limits of what she can bear,
clinging to a fragile faith
in people who often let her down.
And I realize —
she is the little girl who looked back at me
from the poster in my teenage bedroom,
her silent eyes imploring me
to see her, to recognize her pain.
clr2012