The Trellis Gate

artist John George Brown

There is a little girl
in one corner of my brain,
forever swinging on the gate
at Grandma's
in the falling dusk.
Behind me,
in the little cottage,
the lights are on.
Inside are my grandparents,
and safety,
and normalcy.
I peek through
the window
and I want to be 
inside with them
more than anything.
But I dont feel entitled
to open the door
and enter.
I wait to be invited in.

Back on the gate,
swinging, 
- there is the scent of roses -
I am waiting for
the Big People to come
and take me to
that Other Place
where I am trying to survive
the drinking, the shouting, 
the violence.

I am trying to figure out
just where it is,
in this bewildering world,
that I belong.

The trajectory of that arc
will carry me deep
into the  passageways of pain
and out the other side.

I see her, still,
four years old,
in the falling dusk,
swinging on the gate
at Grandma's,
back when it all
began.

Yay! It's Kim's first prompt at Poets United's Verse First and the topic is Fences.

When I think of fences, it is the white picket fence with a rose covered trellis in front of my Grandma's small cottage at 364 Christleton, that springs to mind. Grandma looked after me when I was little while my parents were at work. 

On this one day, they were late in coming, and my grandparents didnt know where I was - they thought I was playing at a neighbor's. But I remember feeling like an invisible child, (though to them I was not, they cared for me wonderfully), who didnt belong anywhere, because of the angst I lived in. Grandma's house was the lit beacon of my childhood, all that was warm and safe and reliable.