Open Mic

I hear your words and I think, this is the place that poetry and stories arise from, then? Can I, with my shallow existence and my sheltered upbringing devoid of physical abuses, substance abuse, rape, imprisonment, or difficult choices offer anything worth saying that will reach up as high as you have had to reach? Who were these people who professed to love and care for you? I listen in amazement as you recount the dangers of the road that brought you here, your cloak of invisibility discarded, your endurance unmasked. What kind of cruel world would allow such things? What child could endure the suffering you have endured? Yet there you stand, apparently whole, triumphant over adversity a child should never have had to bear. I don’t want to hear any more and yet I turn a fascinated ear, I want to find the beauty where there can be none. If there is any to glean, it lies in your standing there, spotlit, reading your pain.