Dirty Toys
by Luis Pabon, LMSW
April is Child Abuse Prevention Month and Sexual Assault Awareness Month. This spoken word piece explores the oftentimes blighted development of childhood sufferers of adverse childhood experiences.
Dirty Toys
There is a place
Where children once played
Now plagued with the remains of dead things displaced
Old shoe strings
Unlaced
Dirty-faced dolls made of plastic and paint
The ones boys would decapitate
To show the girls their strength
Ovens made easy to bake
Maimed by the falling of the rain
That washes away the remains of yesterday
When there was play
Faces now stained with age
And the realization of pain
Angels with broken wings
That wish to fly away
But instead stay
Fed good on a belly full of butterfly memories that flutter around nervously
Not certain it is safe to remember these things
There is this place
Where children once played
Now muddied and grey
With hymns of broken hymens
Virgins broken in by thieves of men
Lives hyphenated by arrested development
Burgeoning lacerations
Cut deep into the skin
Little ones screaming
Under the echo of remembered laughter
Bleeding their way into unnatural disasters
Beautiful giving trees
Stripped of their beautiful leaves
Giving their trunks up for pennies that don’t dollar themselves into security
These seeds hide but do not seek
Borrow but do not keep
Ring around the rosie till the ashes
Put their souls to sleep
As they write their own eulogies
Inside the lids of coffins
That conjure up visions
Prisoners tried and sentenced to conjugal visits
Too young to die
Too old to be acquitted
There are lies on child’s lives
Yet no one wants to admit it
There is no place to play
Hearts are forced to stay inside the confines of a cage
Breathing space raped
No time to act your age
When your age has been delayed
By the onset of heavier things
Eyes full of rage and sad
Childhoods abandoned fast
Like broken toys in body bags
Waiting for heaven's hands to pray them back
Playgrounds full of casualties
Tombstones of jump ropes and broken chained swings
Cemeteries of memories that do not remember a thing
Skeletal tricycles overturned with wheels spinning
Broken dolls unclothed and burnt
Eyelashes and hair missing
Carcasses of seesaws that are boarded up, torn and gone
Monkey bars are twisted up
Measly metal deformed
There is no place to play anymore
Children have replaced their bubblegum for handguns
Fingers on the safety they were once promised
Now triggers waiting to be tried often
What does one do when even the rain can’t stop crying?
Trying its best to seek escape
From the cage of clouds colored in many shades of grey dying
What does one do when even the sunshine frowns?
Fighting up with a heart that is constantly beaten down
These are the lost lives that have died by the roadside
Throwaways left behind
To imagine a life bigger than its actual size
No more coming in before the street lights
Or saying prayers before bedtime
Now every day is midnight
And every night, a goodbye
Waved to the melody of ripped up piano keys
In memory of the lullaby of some child’s life raised to die
The end of playtime
8 going on 35.
Luis Pabon is a Licensed Master's Social Worker who works in the field of mental and behavioral health. He works with clients experiencing a host of psychiatric concerns and walks beside them in their journey toward illness management and recovery.