The Emotional Orphan

Ignore me; I’m a walking broken heart.
I am unable to see objectively.
Listening to myself; listening like a shrink.
When I speak passionately,
I’m not trusted. Passionately.

Throughout my life, I’m not sure there has been praise
for intelligence, power of language,
insight or compassion. I have them.
They’re wasted, so I never see myself,
standing on the front steps of the home I dream of.

Not holding my lover’s hand, and
I can never explain the cuts and bruises.
The sleeve never ends. I’m invisible, stealth, dangerous.
Some like me, but only the charitable ones.
I’m a cripple, a liar to the rest.

I’m factored out in the interest
of someone else s truth.
I’m quiet, shut down and shut off. Then the truth emerges.
Clear sky, the clouds like white cotton,
above a little house, flower beds-dead but for the bright pink.

I want the truth, so I can’t close myself off
from the farmer’s daughter, or block her out.
When a living thing is hurt like that,
at its deepest, function and feeling is altered.

That’s why I’m not to be trusted.
Because a wound to the heart
lives forever as a wound to her mind.

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