Dirty Toys

by Luis Pabon, LMSW

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month and Sexual Assault Awareness Month. This spoken word piece explores the oftentimes blighted development of childhood sufferers of adverse childhood experiences.

Dirty Toys

There is a place

Where children once played

Now plagued with the remains of dead things displaced

Old shoe strings

Unlaced

Dirty-faced dolls made of plastic and paint

The ones boys would decapitate

To show the girls their strength

Ovens made easy to bake

Maimed by the falling of the rain

That washes away the remains of yesterday

When there was play

Faces now stained with age

And the realization of pain

Angels with broken wings

That wish to fly away

But instead stay

Fed good on a belly full of butterfly memories that flutter around nervously

Not certain it is safe to remember these things

There is this place

Where children once played

Now muddied and grey

With hymns of broken hymens

Virgins broken in by thieves of men

Lives hyphenated by arrested development

Burgeoning lacerations

Cut deep into the skin

Little ones screaming

Under the echo of remembered laughter

Bleeding their way into unnatural disasters

Beautiful giving trees

Stripped of their beautiful leaves

Giving their trunks up for pennies that don’t dollar themselves into security

These seeds hide but do not seek

Borrow but do not keep

Ring around the rosie till the ashes

Put their souls to sleep

As they write their own eulogies

Inside the lids of coffins

That conjure up visions

Prisoners tried and sentenced to conjugal visits

Too young to die

Too old to be acquitted

There are lies on child’s lives

Yet no one wants to admit it

There is no place to play

Hearts are forced to stay inside the confines of a cage

Breathing space raped

No time to act your age

When your age has been delayed

By the onset of heavier things

Eyes full of rage and sad

Childhoods abandoned fast

Like broken toys in body bags

Waiting for heaven's hands to pray them back

Playgrounds full of casualties

Tombstones of jump ropes and broken chained swings

Cemeteries of memories that do not remember a thing

Skeletal tricycles overturned with wheels spinning

Broken dolls unclothed and burnt

Eyelashes and hair missing

Carcasses of seesaws that are boarded up, torn and gone

Monkey bars are twisted up

Measly metal deformed

There is no place to play anymore

Children have replaced their bubblegum for handguns

Fingers on the safety they were once promised

Now triggers waiting to be tried often

What does one do when even the rain can’t stop crying?

Trying its best to seek escape

From the cage of clouds colored in many shades of grey dying

What does one do when even the sunshine frowns?

Fighting up with a heart that is constantly beaten down

These are the lost lives that have died by the roadside

Throwaways left behind

To imagine a life bigger than its actual size

No more coming in before the street lights

Or saying prayers before bedtime

Now every day is midnight

And every night, a goodbye

Waved to the melody of ripped up piano keys

In memory of the lullaby of some child’s life raised to die

The end of playtime

8 going on 35.

Luis Pabon is a Licensed Master's Social Worker who works in the field of mental and behavioral health. He works with clients experiencing a host of psychiatric concerns and walks beside them in their journey toward illness management and recovery.