SMILING SKELETONS
By Ross Rosenberg
Strolling dreamily down a familiar street
in the direction of places long forgotten,
I was obliviously drawn to my childhood home.
Like a magnet,
I was irresistibly pulled
in the direction of my home,
where lost days, weeks and years
were anonymously recorded on a calendar
that no one ever saw.
The house, painted anew,
and the unfamiliar over-grown trees,
couldn’t hide memory stained streets,
where an emotionally desperate child
longed to simply frolic and play.
Until that day,
I had been too afraid
to revisit the room
long closed to me,
where broken toys
and missing game pieces
were carelessly strewn
on the ruby red
and matted shag rug of my youth.
In the furthest reaches
of my lonely drenched bedroom,
a dark and cluttered closet
beckoned me to enter,
to sift through
it’s flash-frozen aching memories
of an emotionally abandoned child.
Alone, I was not
as clattery boned closet skeletons,
dance in the light of recollection
of the pristinely preserved
emotional remnants of my childhood.
Memories of the child I used to be,
enervated my closest companions,
causing them to frenetically discharge
the electric energy
of dark and dreary
memories of yesteryear.
This time,
I decided to be strong enough
to fix my gaze
on the shadowy,
but kindly countenance;
of my no longer-frightening friends.
Shoulder to shoulder,
with my skeleton friends,
I surveyed the dark container of my past.
where an exquisitely lonely boy,
once lived on an emotional diet
deficient of all empathy and compassion.
Now is the time
to meld the past and the present,
to return home,
where closets do not hold
memories of a time
that no longer define me.
It is the right time
to release the phantom-pull backwards,
while gently grasping the hand
of the beautiful present moment,
that pulls me increasingly closer
to where my self-love lies.
Ross Rosenberg
3-27-18
By Ross Rosenberg, M.Ed, LCPC, CADC
Psychotherapist, Author, Educator, Expert Witness
For more information about Ross’s Self-Love Recovery Program, write us at help@selfloverecovery.com.
Originally seen on PsychCentral.com. See my other articles on PsychCentral.com