Scars
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First you must not cry
If you cry in front of one of them
They will know how to always make you cry
So you bundle it up deep inside
Stuff it tightly into a ball
Bury it within
Ignore the choking and hitching
Ignore the scrapes on your confidence
Ignore the well-aimed arrows, barbed with popularity
That fly down your throat
Ignore them
Move past them
Move upwards
Into light
Into life
Your career, your goals
You create despite them
But their little hands scrabble
Clawing at your mouth
Stealing your poise, slashing across your knowledge
With the truth that they did not care
About the sharp words that punctured your childhood
The cuts to your esteem
The nasty notes kicking into you with steel boots
Like nothing to them at worst
Rosy memories of their own rascally years
Had the pills you swallowed taken hold
Had the blade been sharper
They would have been unsurprised, cried for an hour
Gone back to the pretty clothes and hair and forgotten you
Wrap this knowledge around the tears
Gag on the truth as you swallow it
That you did not matter
Matter now
Matter to the other wounded
The waking dead who lived only after those first brutal years
Lock away the tears
Take the crumbling roses of the Others' yesterdays
Wipe their dust over your face to cover the scars of youth

9/28/97