Child's Fort

I remember trying to fall asleep when I was a child.
I built a fort inside of my mind and nothing, not even death could reach me.
The only watch I've ever owned was a Timex Snoopy Watch. I believe that’s the only time when the concept of time was not so wishy-washy or completely foreign to me.

We non-exist like a child bride waiting for a stranger to buy her for twelve dollars and treat her worse than a piece of property.
If you’re ever in doubt that humanity is in short supply, just turn on the news and remember that the road to hell is paved with both the bones of the guilty and of the innocent.
Every silver lining has a cloud and for every glass half full, there are shards of broken glass carpet bombing the unswept desert like bloody rose petals.

I remember not being able to fall asleep when I was a child.
My mother told me to imagine a blackboard and to erase all of the thoughts inside my head.
For some reason I remember thinking about JFK and all kinds of other things that no child would ever be thinking about. It did not help me to fall asleep any faster, but I did finally grow tired thinking about how messed up I was for such a little kid.

Bobby and Donald had a tree house and my mother forbade me to go up inside so I stayed down below all by myself.
For some reason I believed if I went up into that tree house my mother would find out, and that scared me to death.
I built a child’s fort inside my psyche and to this day I am still ripping away the two by fours trying desperately to find the inner child I sealed away so many years ago.

Charles Cicirella
9/15/14