The Lost Childhood

By Pramoth Adhivarahan

Come to me and take me away

To the place where I long to go

See inside me, I am still the child

Whom you left long ago

The wall that I have built

Will only let you go

It is the result of the golden years

That I have lost somewhere, somehow

Come to me and give me back

My childhood that has gone in facing the storm

Against which I so lonely stood

Not to tell the pain that always came

Like the wave coming back to strike the rock again.

You are the boat that would help me cross the sea

The sea of pain that always stares back at me

O God! I don’t know

How many like me are back there?

Who want a home, a place to rest their feet

Who yearn for love, which they never got

A place that they can call their own

People whom they can love

Play with them, laugh with them and say to this world

Hey!! I am no longer alone.

This poem is for those children who are without a home, which they so much deserve. The first four lines is a painful cry calling those who had left them and rest is a yearning to see them in others who would love them.