Charles once conjectured that I’m the only person he knows who had a happy enough childhood that I can afford to remember how unhappy it was.

As often as we walked when we were young,
one would have thought us active and aware
of how our bodies carried us among
the attitudes we voiced into the air.
But we were disconnected at the neck
as if a Frankenstein had sewn us there.
Our gifted heads were balanced on the wreck
of adolescence,
walking any where.

That time was sore confusion,
but much worse was earlier
when we were children still
with little choice and powerless.
The curse embarrassment then hunted us,
to kill the sweets of childhood
adults recall while they forget
the pains of being small.