The One He Needed

Many therapists will tell you

To look at your inner child

And be the person

That they needed

As they grew into you

I see mine

Eight years old

So innocent and bright

And I feel the pressure

Of what that child needed

All that I can think of

Is how I’m failing him

My mother says she’s worried

About me, and therefore him

She hands me her worry

Like she handed it to him

All those years ago

If I could do it over

I would forge a different path

Not in the experiences he will have

But in the ways he

Will experience all of them

What might have happened to him

If the teen that he became

Did not have to dull his shine

Hide his inner light

For fear of what would be said

What would it have been like

If the generational trauma

Had been contained before him

Instead of rushing through his mother

Too much for her to bear

She took a brunt of it

Stopped much of it herself

But not enough to stop the pain

The sorrow of the past

From settling into his joints

And what fearlessness might have been

If he hadn’t heard our father’s words

The violent threats of ignorance

That dripped off the paternal tongue

What could his life have been

If the adults that he needed

Had been the ones who raised him

If he hadn’t had to learn

The ways to watch

To calculate

To absorb the pain around him

I see him now

At eight years old

Before the thick of it

I want so bad to save him

But I can barely save myself

I stand here in the present

That inner child naïve

Looking back at me

Across the chasm

Where the teen between us

Fell and shattered

If those therapists are

To be believed

I need to be the one

That both of them

And all the others

Needed on the path

It’s just another burden

I feel placed onto my back

I turn desperately to find

Some future, aged me

Perhaps myself at sixty

To be the man I need right now

But the future is unwritten

Unlike the past

With its marks upon my bones

So I’m here

Alone again

With the expectant eyes

Of eight year me

Trained on my life

There are ways he’d be impressed

But others I’m not sure

Only now do I realize

How he really scares me

I am afraid he’ll look at me

And say the things I know

Will be said to him

In his future

In my past

And so I have become a snake

Consuming its own tail

Terrified of being wounded

By all my former mes

In the flash of disappointment

I feel that I’ve become