Backwards

 We built a bridge once,  

didn’t we? Each plank laid  

with shaking hands,  

each nail driven in  

with hope as the hammer.  

It was rough, splintered,  

but it held.  

Now, splinters fly.  

They tear it apart, board by board,  

tossing them into the river.  

The current eats them,  

takes them down  

where light can’t reach.  

Don’t you see?  

The child at the edge of the bank,  

their reflection rippled,  

already uncertain—  

you’ve given them nothing  

but stones to carry  

and nowhere safe to cross.  

We built a door once,  

didn’t we? A heavy thing,  

but we opened it,  

propped it wide with our bodies,  

our words, our love.  

They are closing it now.  

Slamming it shut with laws,  

with lies,  

with the fists of those  

who don’t even know  

what’s on the other side.  

A child sits,  

cross-legged on the threshold,  

their name  

half-formed in their mouth,  

their future a fogged mirror.  

You tell them:  

Not yet. Not you. Not here.

We built a ladder once,  

didn’t we? Each rung  

a hard-won truth,  

a proclamation:  

You are seen. You are real.

But the ladder is burning,  

the fire fed by headlines,  

by hands that sign papers  

and call it kindness.  

Backwards.  

We are falling backwards,  

stumbling into shadows  

we thought we’d escaped—  

the cold corridors of silence,  

the small, sharp rooms of shame.  

Don’t speak to me  

of progress.  

Tell the children instead,  

the ones curled like question marks  

in classrooms, in homes,  

in bodies they are still learning to name.  

Tell them why  

the bridge is broken,  

why the door is locked,  

why the ladder is ash.  

Tell them why you left them  

alone  

on the wrong side of the world.  

Aspen Greenwood