For You

An eight-year-old

Was one to behold

A festive imagination.

When the congregation

Told her those were “bad people”

She thought the unspeakable,

Going to bed that night

And waking with a terrible fright.

For they were her aunt and uncle

And into her dream they stumbled.

While they were really narcissistic,

Her imagination told her they were truly altruistic.

She woke in a potato sack

Without much more than a throwback

Into a harsh reality.

She said goodbye to the carefree personality

As she learned she had her own dead sea.

They killed her parents, her sisters and brother,

But kept her hostage unlike any other.

~Ann Marie