Monsters

As I sit quietly in the corner of a coffee shop, I see a man enter, gripping the tiny hand of a girl, not yet five.

Her hair is an unkempt mane of golden wheat. An unidentifiable blue substance stains the perimeter of her lips.

They pick a table. She howls with delight as her dad animatedly brushes his hair with a miniature pink hairbrush that could only possibly belong to her.

She reaches across the table that separates them; her arms too small to span the gap, pleading.

He willingly yields the brush, and she gleefully mimics his movement, combing wildly through her tangled ringlets.

She is familiar. She is foreign.

For I know what it is to be a child. To exist blissfully beyond reach of a world that schemes and lurks and gnashes vengeful teeth. To see only my father. To believe he sees only me.

I want to shout to her, Beware! There is danger ahead. I want to urge her to turn back. I want to scream at her to wake up, wake up, wake up.

But I am trapped behind glass, my fervent warnings bubbling up without noiselessly like a fish in a tank. Inaudible and gasping for air.

It is the middle of the night when she pads across the hall in her footie pajamas, tears brimming in her dusky blue eyes. Her father soothes her. It was only a nightmare. You can sleep in our bed. You will be safe here. The monsters cannot get you here.

For I know not what it is to be a parent. To lie again and again until the words become a familiar refrain. One you will yourself to believe in. You will be safe here. You will be safe here. You will be safe.

I know not what it is to have a piece of yourself exist on the outside. In the very same cruel land that chewed you up and spit you out. Left you for dead. Yes, here is where your greatest love now lives. Dreams. Thrives. Explores.

Here you know damn well that the monsters roam free.

You must lie to keep going. You must lie to let them walk outside, go to school, play with a friend. To let them grow up and fall in love, buy a home, start a family of their own.

The hazy sun is still making its daily climb when the phone rings. She has traded her pink hairbrush for a briefcase, the faint blue remnants of a popsicle for lipstick.

Her father knows what she will say before there are words. He knows that the monsters came in the night, no matter how hard he tried to keep them at bay.

He knows his heart will break with hers.

And in this singular moment, I again know what it is to be a child. Broken. Pleading. Angry.

And held. Always, held.