Peering over the playground fence I feel the presence of my lost 

soul. Hearing children in the distance frolic in their own laughter 

I can’t help but fall to my knees 

as I embrace the warmth of the whisper 

of a past I can’t obtain nor begin to scrape 

a morsel of for my keeping.  

How I wish I had a box to keep

all of the memories that are now lost 

to the life I have lived, lodged too deep in the scrape 

I have yet to clean. Still, I laugh 

at the face of this uncertain whisper 

that has made a home in my face, my knuckles, and knees. 

I long for the sting that brands my knees.  

So as long as I live I know I have kept 

a part of this child that was once me, she is now but a whisper,  

yet she is there, in the moss and coffee ground ring of my eyes, she is not lost.  

But I am, I am lost in the longing for trampoline bliss and laughter, 

in the desire to unintentionally be scraped.   

Still, I see my mothers house key scrape 

the front of her childhood home, with a skirt that sits just below her knees. 

I think of how she never had to worry about the meaning of a man’s laughter,  

how she she never had to keep her hair so neatly kept 

for a man’s happiness, just for her to be called useless and lost.  

My tears slide down my cheeks in a quiet-like whisper. 

Girlhood only lasts for a short while, till talks of sisterhood echo into whispers 

of rejection and turning on the ones you used to scrape 

your palms raw with. Now we are all lost 

in the vines of the trees and still climbing, still closing our knees

for those who we are supposed to keep

satisfied. We have been stung by not enough bees, and too much cruel laughter.  

The playground has begun to be drowned out by this piercing laughter.

Sparkly shoes lightly whisper 

against the coarse pavement, and a rock kicks up. A piece of my childhood for me to keep.

Maybe it will be enough to draw out a drop of blood and scrape

my dull and unbothered knees.  

I realize that I would always be held by this thing that will always be lost.  

The shift of growing up, away from blithe untroubled laughter and scraped appendages

is not the only thing that whispers to the grounded and knelt knees. 

I walk away from the fence and wish I could tell them to keep running till they are lost in the vines of their lives, away from the madness of it all.