For the Abused

I wrote this piece about a decade ago, and posted it online last year in tribute to the courageous victims of Coach Jerry Sandusky who spoke out and helped protect future victims.

But some of it applies to children who survive traumas of any kind–and I post it with a heart that is still breaking for those children who witnessed their classmates being gunned down in Sandy Hook Elementary.

The tragedy fuels me forward in my work with determination and hope that we can find a way in coming days to crack the code on how to do much more to protect the children of the world from these types of dangers and traumas.

And how we can do much more to stop the abuse, and in particular the sexual abuse, of children in their safest of places.

For the Abused

We, Your Oppressors:
We’re sorry we pushed you down
Held you under water

Till your face turned blue
Watched without a pang

As you struggled and kicked
Watched until the fight went out of you
Pulled you up with just enough life still in you

To make you curse the not-dying…

We’re sorry.
Or we should be.

Sorry with every breath in our bodies.
Sorry till there is no more sorry.

We, Your Watchers-By:
We’re sorry we turned our heads
Ignored the bubbles

Gurgling desperately to the surface
The muffled cries under water

Cries any watcher with eyes toward hearing

Could have seen and heard.

Sorry our own petty problems

Seemed infinitely more precious

Than watching for your pain…

We’re sorry.

Or we should be.

Sorry with eyes now opened.
Sorry with heads no longer turned.

We, Your Also-Abused:

We’re sorry. We know how it feels
To choke pleadingly beneath water

For a single breath of air
Struggling and kicking

To the surface
Only to find ourselves

Limp and collapsed on the side of the shore
Along with the rest of the left-for-garbage…

We’re sorry.

And we truly are.

On days we can feel things.

On days we have tears left over

From our own blue faces.