Behind the Curtain

By Ashley Sapp

A healing inner child sits
behind this heart’s curtain,
anxiously picking at her knuckles
as she peers out from behind the folds,
casting a frightened glimpse at
what all I’ve done since her span.
There is no explanation for
adding up the days: only time.
It is cruel, how this heart hides
from itself - battered yet willing.
Behind the curtain, the child
does not cry. Instead, she whistles
a tune for me - waiting, waiting.
When the curtain finally lifts,
the scenery has fallen apart,
a catastrophe of experience.
I greet her. Lift her. Beseech her.
My heart pounds with the effort
while suddenly exposed in crisis.
So much time has passed that
she fails to forgive me, fails to
recall that she is me, only: revealed.
Trauma has a way of licking away
the memory but never the wounds.

Ashley Sapp (she/her) resides in Columbia, South Carolina, with her dog, Barkley. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of South Carolina in 2010, and her work has previously appeared in Indie Chick, Variant Lit, Emerge Literary Journal, Common Ground Review, and elsewhere. Ashley has written two poetry collections: Wild Becomes You and Silence Is A Ballad.