A Little Girl

I once wrote about a little girl,

a little girl who loved to pick flowers in the sunshine

and who stayed up late to see the stars outside her window,

who loved the smell of rain

and freshly printed books.

A little girl, with an imagination so wild

she left gifts outside for fairies,

wishing something so magical could be real.

A little girl who dreamed big and was full of hope,

who could have been so much more

had her innocence not been ripped away from her,

with blood and tears

that little girl had to die.

So, I had to become someone else,

something else.

I had to bury that little girl six feet under the ground

in a grave I still sit by to grieve,

for the life I lost,

a life that little girl will never get to know.

Because people who were supposed to love her didn’t

she’ll never get to know who she became,

to know if she ever made it to the mountains in her dreams

or discover if the magic she believed in was real.

I didn’t get to just grow up,

I got to survive simply being alive

in a world that made me into a reject

in a home that felt like Hell,

kept in a bedroom made like a prison cell.

I dreamed of ways to die,

if I couldn’t catch my breath

then I just wouldn’t breathe,

and when I didn’t die

I dreamed of running far away

as far away as I could.

I wanted a real home

I longed to know what love felt like

I wanted a place I didn’t have to hide in,

and be touched by someone who didn’t make me flinch.

A little girl died and I took her place,

I may be the product of violence

but I still kept that innocent soul in a box

buried not in the ground

but deep inside myself,

where one day I hope to be able to open it again

and make the little girl who died proud,

so she knows it wasn’t all for nothing.

Two decades after her death,

I still look at flowers and remember the sunshine

I still find myself gazing up at the stars at night

and I sometimes catch myself standing in the rain.

I’ll flip through the pages of books

and inhale her memories of magic and happily ever afters,

and remember the way she believed in the unimaginable.

I wish I could have been her all this time,

maybe one day I can live for her memory

instead of just surviving all the punches I took.

One day I hope to make her dreams come true.

One day I’ll be far away from here.

One day I’ll sit in the mountains and watch the stars come out.

One day I’ll be able to grow a garden for fairies to play in.

One day I’ll have a home of my own,

and share it with someone who truly loves me.

One day,

I can let the past go

and all the pain that comes with it,

and when I walk away from that little girl’s grave

for the last time,

I’ll leave a rose and the diary of the life I made for her

and hope that she can forgive me

for having to put her there so long ago.