Searching
For all the parents who can’t escape the reality of a drug addicted child.
I look for her on street corners among hunched frames and empty eyes as I drive by on my way to work. Emotionless faces dirty with forgotteness, self-pity, and a base desire for survival. They’re not living, just surviving, and in a hell the passers by don’t know. Dignity is a memory, hope was a luxury from childhood, but not for all. They are someone else’s child, not mine. They used to smile and eat and sleep on some mothers lap, there were dreams to be chased and gifts to be discovered, good Lord, she could be anywhere, with anyone. I search for her silhouette in the crowds gathered in parks where children no longer visit, among the tent castles and cardboard homes, at littered bus stops with urine soaked walls, I search for my girl and wonder where she’s gone. I wonder if she’s hungry or hurting, if she will ever come home and if there’s really a deal to be made with the devil if my faith fails. I wonder all the time if she remembers she is loved. There’s a darkness that settles into my bones, a sticky mix of rage and sorrow. I would kill the world with it if I didn’t have God to convict me. She is behind my every thought. I regret yesterdays, today, and tomorrow, there are no memories that don’t hurt. I would put a dog out of it misery for less pain, hers and mine, this is what we share now. A mothers song chimes with the moaning earth, sin like rain falls where it may, pain has no qualifications.
