Myopia

when i was a little boy,
blind to the world's decay,
my eyesight was poor,
glasses perched on my nose,
a fragile kid in a fragile world.

i thought everything was normal
because i couldn't see the cracks,
the fissures that ran deep
through the walls of my home.

but as i grew older
my eyes got stronger.
i began to see
the rot that lay beneath

toxic religion,
poverty's heavy chains,
emotional and mental abuse,
unhappiness that clung like a tumor.

i figured out i didn't have
a normal or ideal childhood,
just a mess of broken dreams
and shattered hopes.

the years keep going forward,
and with every white hair
that pops up in my beard
my vision gets even better.