When I Was A Kid

When I was a kid, I thought the world was like the one in the cartoons The hero dressed in his red, white, and blue would always fly in and save the day And the despicable criminals would always be diabolical in every way imaginable We would each have an archenemy, a Lex Luthor, made of pure evil, deserving punishment But like the cartoons, this wasn’t my reality In the second grade, that girl was assigned to sit beside me Quickly, she became my villain and tormentor, my bully And everyday, without fail, she made me feel worthless like I wasn’t even human She suffocated me with words like midget and stupid Drowning my ears and tearing me to pieces Never to be glued together the same way again School became a game of hide and seek I would stand still trying to not be seen Hoping that for just one day she would give me paradise and forget me… But she never did To me, she didn’t deserve a name- only enemy Then one day, tragedy struck and all that remained was a fatherless girl fearful and alone Her eyes reflected sorrow and fragility And what I saw in her wasn’t a degenerate villain or enemy but Gabby, A girl lost and broken, wanting someone clad in red, white, and blue And though I was certainly no hero, anyone would do Reality isn’t black and white with unblemished victims and heartless bullies Reality is a mixture of hues of beauty and anguish tingled with a pain that is universal What was burrowed in my heart was real and so was hers But scars never heal And my heart was covered in them I couldn’t simply forget the past torments and tortures… No one could But what I saw in Gabby wasn’t my pain but hers.