The world is not kind to the small ones, the ones who sleep with their hands curled like fists, dreaming of fireflies and cotton candy skies. But here, in the shadows where monsters wear human faces, innocence is plucked like an overripe peach—its skin bruised, its sweetness devoured.
They come for the children in the night, in broad daylight, in their own homes. Oh, how we have failed them, these fragile saplings bending under the weight of secrets too heavy for their tender bones. The door to childhood should be locked from the inside, but it swings wide open, letting in the wolves disguised as fathers, brothers, uncles, and even mothers.
I think of the quiet children, the ones who do not cry. They swallow their screams, hide their hurt under bedsheets soaked in nightmares. They wear their fear like second skin, invisible but ever-present. And what do we do? We teach them to be silent, to be small, to survive on scraps of love in a world that devours them whole.
The epidemic of abuse festers in the quiet corners, behind closed doors where hands that should cradle instead crush. The world turns its head, too busy or too afraid to see. But I see them—these broken children. I see their hollow eyes, the ghosts of what they might have been if only someone had reached out, had pulled them from the edge before they fell.
Where are the mothers who are supposed to protect? Where are the fathers who should cradle their children in tenderness? Instead, they become the thieves of youth, the marauders of innocence, leaving behind only the shell of a child who will grow into an adult too soon, and too scarred.
The world moves on, indifferent, while childhoods are buried in shallow graves. The ground beneath our feet is soft with the weight of lost innocence, and still, we walk as if we are not complicit.
B 🤍
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