A CHILD’S PLACE

by Kristina Byas

Your big voices carried,
rounding sharp corners
and knocking down doors. And so,
as your secrets infesting the walls
of our home caused them to crumble,
a little girl’s innocence
quietly suffocated beneath the rubble.
If the truth knows age,
then time cannot obscure clarity.
I’ll sit here,
reconciling the two,
choosing to forgive while mourning
the choices I was never gifted,
the moments I never lived
while in a child’s place.