Abstract
Did I ever want to get over the barrier between us,
to scale the walls of the fortress
she constructed to protect what was broken in her?
Did I love her as an infant?
Did that vulnerable love whither
in the desert of her heart?
Was it then that I built my own protection?
My own fortress that would take me years to recognize,
and more years to begin to dismantle,
the same walls I still chip at.
Could we have loved in time?
Dangerous musings.
Guilt creeps toward me
on all fours whispering,
‘you should have,
you should have.’
Protest grows in my heart.
I was an innocent
who deserved to be loved,
but was outside
her fortress.
Damaged and broken
I huddled behind my own walls,
outside of hers,
and alone.
But my trauma was not hers.
Not genocide.
Not terror.
Not hunger.
Not displacement.
I had enough to eat.
A secure home.
Clothes on my back.
Promise of a future.
America.
But it was not enough
to open the heart closed
so young.
There may have been time,
but it was too late for love.
