The rain’s crying the tears I can’t quite shed.
I’m too busy holding myself together.
Yet beneath my prison of steely ribs
my little child is weeping and trembling.
I can keep locking her in her room,
bribing her with numbing food,
giving her a lecture on behaving like an adult.
But how crazy is that?
For she is my greatest heroine,
the repository of my deepest feelings.
I must build an altar to her,
to her jeweled tears and open bleeding heart.
She is both my tenderness and my strength.