I’m sorry to go so long without a post but I have been traveling and unable to get to a wi-fi site. Normally I will try to have a new post every couple of days.

 

 

I occasionally was assigned shore patrol when I was in the Navy. We would often patrol in the seediest parts of the ports we visited. Too often we would see children working the streets, growing up way to soon.

 “Child of the City” (Riding in Boxcars, 2006) is about one of these girls. She was one of many, but she caught my eye because she seemed so young and yet so old.

She had a technicolor tattoo of a butterfly on her shoulder. Perhaps once it had told a story, but it had long since been pinned to a wall in someone’s collection.

 

When I looked in her eyes, there was no one there.

 

Glenn K. Currie

 

 

Child of the City

 

Her shoulder butterfly

Struggled, feebly.

Trying to escape.

Caught in the cloth

Of the life weaved.

 

Her eyes were tired.

Her body, glazed china, broken

On city streets.

Cracks traced the edges

Of the pasted pieces.

 

She was a child,

Already bent with age.

Covers of a book,

With the center

Ripped out.

 

She stood on the corner,

Waiting a lifetime,

For day to end,

 

And night to hide,

The despair.