The Department Store Tower

(Warning: Poem makes reference to child abuse)

She taught me how to stay out of sight
the women who worked the candy counter

Dragged my fourteen-year-legs in beside her
as management brushed past, oblivious

Stick to the aisles and passageways, she said
Make sure you are always busy.

She couldn’t say the words that burned on her tongue:
He’ll follow you into darkened corners of the warehouse
He’ll lock the doors and tell you it’s all your fault

No one talked about what this man did,
five floors beneath the department store opulence
While people shopped, and ate, and bought

The wheels of consumerism, well-oiled
stuffing our consciousness with lies and deceit
the vulnerable confined to shadows and margins

But some of us will never forget
Innocent fragments haunting locked corners
Ensuing rage still railing against the injustice
That puts a pedophile in charge.

(Image my own)

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VJ

Permission to write, paint, and imagine are the gifts I gave myself when chronic illness hit - a fair exchange: being for doing. Relevance is an attitude. Humour essential.

37 thoughts on “The Department Store Tower”

  1. The quiet warnings, the coded survival tips, the innocence ripped away while the world kept spinning above, it’s unbearable, yet you’ve captured it with such brutal grace. Your words don’t just tell a story, they bleed truth. They scream for every child who was forced into silence while the world looked away.

    Thank you for putting this pain into poetry. For those who’ve lived it, your voice is a light in a place that was never supposed to be lit.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I appreciate your support. Visiting your site, I know that you understand. Sometimes I fear my words are too raw, but you have reminded me that no words are too much if they break the silence.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Those monsters deserve punishment and removal from a civil society. I know it’s hard to write about this subject, but it should also never be kept in the dark. Thank you for sharing, VJ.

    Liked by 1 person

  12. Too hard to press ‘like’ on words of this caliber. May all who “get away” with such things, never sleep again! So very hard to wait for God’s wrath, but it will come….God promises, it will come.

    Liked by 1 person

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