🦊 For The Fox Child

for the inner child who survived

I dropped the mask of ghostly grace,
No longer Mother made of air.
No longer bending in their place,
To earn a love that wasn't there.

I shed the cloak of wounded cries,
The victim-child with hands outstretched.
No more the hollow lullabies,
That begged to be redeemed or fetched.

Instead I knelt beside the flame,
And found the one they'd left behind,
A soul unburned, without a name,
Still curled in time beyond the mind.

He looked at me with feral eyes,
A wild soft fox between the seams,
Not touched by shame, nor old disguise,
Just wrapped in dusk and stitched in dreams.

He asked me, “Will you trade me too,
To win the warmth that ghosts pursue?”
I said, “No more. I choose what's true.
Not love that hurts. Not pain as glue.”

I held him close. I held him tight.
No rescuing. No blame. No role.
Just quiet hands through velvet night,
And in that hush, I felt him whole.

He curled against my chest and knew,
That I was here, and I would stay,
Not for applause or past review,
But just to love him back each day.

So now he walks the world with me,
This fox-child heart, this flame run free.
No ghost to feed. No cage. No plea.
Just my fox-child and grown me.