Poetry Corner: Kimberly F. Brown
Better to be Taken?
Is this a fair question?
Is it better to be taken?
Removed from your environment?
Taken from the place you call home?
Distant from family and friends?
Is it better to be taken?
Better to keep you safe?
Lost in a system without any plans or directions
Placing you with strangers giving you corrections
Removed from your environment
To an unfamiliar place
Making breaking promises on how to keep you safe
Safe like a lab rat caught in a maze
While human beings, professionals attempt to lead the way
Taken from the place you once called home
Traumatizing your emotions
Giving you labels, while forcing medication
Casting you out like a swollen thumb
Everyone loses, no one wins,
the heart is shattered, feelings are numb
Hundreds are caught in a system
Where rescue won’t come
Distant from family and friends
No connections, no relation or communication
Is this the end? End of someone’s life?
Was this right?
Removing a child
Just to keep them safe, who’s to say?
Aren’t they traumatized twice as much.…..? Being displaced?
Better to be taken?
Portrait OF A WAITING CHILD
How long is the wait?
How long should it take?
To find a home, not my own……..
How long is the wait?
One day, two, maybe three months to years
I age, get older
Disgruntled, no longer humbled?
Attitude, a hot mess
Resentment of thee
Who removed me? Why?
Abuse, neglect, misuse
Who’s to say?
Rumors in the hood
Speculation of a case
No one really knows what goes on day to day
Now, I’m a number
No longer part of the human race…………
How long is the wait?
Reunification? What, when, where and how?
Your rules, I lose – all the time
Wait, How long
How long must I wait?
Run-away? Running from systems
Marketing me to get paid?
How long is the wait?
See my face, a silhouette of a place
My house, my home, my space
All the time
Return me quickly; destroy that file
I’m a Portrait of a Waiting Child
Poems by Kimberly F. Brown, a local poet, trainer and motivational speaker. She runs a support and advocacy group for foster youth and families through Doveside Productions LLC. May is National Foster Care Month.
