Our childhood walks within our lives
Self-conscious in church
Anxious to do right
Seen but not felt
Such a good handsome boy | such a nice pretty girl
​shame shushed and set on a shelf  
no speech, no sign
Kneeling in a pew
And also with you
Unable to mount the faceless, hold-less granite cliff between filius
et pater above.

Our childhood sits within our graves
Quiet as a scar
Painful as a platitude
Lonely as the sun
Insistent as an itch
Dirty inconvenient feet
leaving sand in the entryway and soil on the carpet
We are deaf and numb to their presence
Until that good kid beckons us down into 
a bone gray depression in the earth
waiting like a tangle-haired doll 
in need of simple company.