Scars from childhood

Morning starts abruptly, light a pressure on eyelids that do not open yet. Instant awareness held submerged in gentle breathing, no outward sign to show consciousness returned. A tragic skill learned to self-protect, closed chapter that carved deep lines of hardwired instruction that allows survival of the mind, of sanity.

How many childhood fears have chained the present? Have years brought freedom from the past or have they merely veiled it with soft edges? Is this an answer that can be known? Is it even wanted? Did years and tears undo the knots tied in the gentle psyche of a child bruised and battered, marked with handprints, have they cast the light of day deep in the closets of the soul where it hid when the body was plundered?

Moonlight dances, midnight swims, years drowned in wine with crazy runs along the razor's edge that parted skin not separating breath from lung or beat from heart, kaliedoscope of bright pretense of joyous living until it all fell down and rage grabbed depression, all anger misdirected, by the nape and turned it outward, where it belonged.

Words were spoken. Cold and quiet words that told some ugly truths. Shock, horror, on the faces full of lies. All open to the daylight, filled with air, the secrets broken. Yet still I wake and lay as if I'm sleeping. Breathing gently, scenting air for taint of rum, smell of tobacco, hand sliding deeper underneath the pillow feeling for a knife no longer there, no longer needed except by blind instinct that still remembers and guards me from the dark recesses of my childhood fear.