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Haunt of the Past

A grown boy

By Rachel SPublished 13 days ago 2 min read
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Haunt of the Past
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

It wasn't always like this.

That's the lame -but tinged with droplets of the faintest hope- sentence that revebrates uncerimoniously in my mind as I watch the careless children whizz past me lacking even the vaguest of awareness to the world of the challenged.

The trees bid me farewell under the grip of the slight breeze, their blossoms sprouting to meet the rays of the boastful sun. a lone bird cries from a distance away, her call unanswered in the silence that suddenly engulfs me in hard clutches.

The children run. I see them. They mock the crutches resting beneath my armpits only by showing obliviousness to anything other than the bliss they were blessed with. their voices are banned from my mind in result of the intense plelasure and happiness that emenate from them in the most beautiful way.

My voice once sounded like that too. My heart once felt the security of a child, of a little boy. but boys are meant to grow. Slow as a rising tree, they grow.

Polio didn't just kill the muscles in my legs and thighs. It hacked out ceaslessly every sense of joy or hope or the dream of a future that ever dared exist in my fractured fantasy.

Here's where I'm supposed to cry. I know. Here's where tears prick my eyes and I feel lonely and I think back to the past where it was all better and easier and lighter.

But of course my insides are dry. pain is too dangerous to feel. Emotions are too delicate to delve into. once the tears come, they never cease to flow.

Children run. Children laugh. Children play. Children bliss. Children live.

It's only in my line of vision that death looms overhead. It's through a stranger's eyes that hope can exist. that futures can perhaps be formed. that dreams can live.

Children run. Children speak. Children dance. Children sing. Children are.

The questions sometimes plague. late at night when the moon shimmers an eerie glow on the dull walls, when the millions of stars beg for gazes to rest upon them, when the world is cast in a darkness that nullifies anything physical and only allows the spirit to be. Why? Why me?

Children run. Children giggle. Children try. Children try again.

The darkness grows and the stars cower in its thickness.

Why?

Psychological
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