The Disenfranchisement of a Life

What a magical place this world once was to me.
As a child I saw everything that could be,
and I reveled in all of the stories I heard
as a speckle-eyed boy learning word after word.

Santa and faeries, an egg-wielding bunny,
and even a God who’d eternally love me
-- I blossomed, a flower absorbing the sun
with a glint in my eye that would soon dull to none.

For we all have that fallout as we come to terms,
while we’re learning we live in a miserable world
where there’s murder and rape
and where dreams don’t come true
… where sometimes there’s no one to love you but you.

I now saw the world in a dull shade of gray
and I shriveled my stalk as I shied from the rays
for the sun was a way to get cancer and die
where a childhood me just saw lights in the sky.

These life lessons learned shook me right to my core
as I discerned the truth of my childhood lore
-- with a dampening interest in life, now so stark,
this once magical world became dauntingly dark.

Such darkness, I've found, is a stain that will stay;
it's a lifetime of nighttime with no sun or day.
When I look in my wake, I see lies full of years,
then I peer up ahead, facing mountains of fears.

While I climb toward my death in the dark of the night
I wish so to be far down below in the light;
just a blossoming flower, absorbing the rays,
with a glint in his eye that does not go away.

No egg-wielding bunny nor Santa exists,
just the words on this page and the scars on my wrists,
just the nightmares I face every moment I wake,
just the world when I see that the magic was fake.