A little girl cries and the world asks her
what's wrong?
When she mummers her answer
they’ve stopped listening.
A question posed purely out of politeness.
At first she thinks this is an anomaly
but soon she realizes the whole world
has turned their back,
cast her off as a weakling,
too young to understand,
too restless to be taught.
She knows things well beyond her age
things that would make any adults of the world
shudder and turn their backs again in denial.
As she grows she only learns more disappointment
she finds the world holds more liars
and the few people she trusts
tell her to keep her head down,
nobody likes used baggage.
Shame and fear are the only things she seems to learn.
Eventually she finds an escape
in the colorful capsules her mother keeps in the cabinet.
One a day, then two, then three,
the numbers rise along with her pain.
No one seems to notice.
Until one day they find her on a cold tile floor.
Ten was too many.

A little boy cries and the world tells him
to be a man,
boys don’t cry they say.
So he stops crying.
He tries to be a man.
He learns the rules from his father, brothers, and uncles.
Blindly he follows in their footsteps,
numbed to the world.
He learns he must be strong even when the hurt inside
is too much to bear.
Emotions are weak, they tell him.
Men aren’t weak.
But inside he sheds tear
after tear
after tear.
Until one day he decides this world
wasn’t fit to hold him.