Ryder is Daddy’s Lullaby

Swimming in watercolors

while their fingertips painted

an otherwise untouchable now brilliant sky

youthful ablutions drawn outside the lines

wash the sciolisms from my back

reaching for the sirehood of mercy

unmolded, from the malleable potential

of a cynical disposition

that wants to cater to the abstract

somewhere in the art of the innocent

life is worshipped like clay

what is ideologically absurd

is a capricious conviction

and then I wake up at 3 a.m.

wrest from childhood again

with a cabbage patch soft

body to allay my fears

but the cold sweat of night

are the siren signals of abuse

I cradle you harder from the loneliness

unbeknownst of the shame unspoken

drawings from the integrity of a pen

while you find safety in the quiet

my life is profoundly and unequivocally

me searching for the blankets to cover

these things I’ve excavated and protect

holding my hand, snoring in my ear

Eddie Brophy is a poet and blogger from Massachusetts and has an MA in Poetry. His poems have appeared in Parnassus, Z Publishing's 'Best Emerging Poets in Massachusetts 2017' and 'Best Emerging Poets North East 2018', The Poet's Haven Digest: Darker Than Fiction, Rhythm of the Bones: Dark Marrow: Issue Two', The Penman Review, Terror House Press and Haunted MTL. You can read his previous publications and blog at: https://eddiebrophywriter.weebly.com/.