A tribute to the spirit and resilience of the ten-year-old girl I once knew who survived the evil cleric paedophile she had the misfortune to meet…

August Kisses
Warm and sweet
Sanguine scented
Rose flushed youth
Lost in summer’s
Gleeful glowing light
While all the while
The quarter moon sits tight
And waits to rise
To seize me
His face I see
And tongue I feel
Breathing hardness on
My softly face
A hand in his
Entrapped
Left there alone
To touch and smell
His strangeness
When lost in miles
Above the stars
My childish thoughts
Engage beyond the moon
Of skip and hop
In safety
Once drenched in joy
To never come
Again in night
Is pain beyond
All cruelty
To thieve the chance
Of love of life
Of hope of joy
Carved out one’s fate
In black of night-
No freedom borne
Inside my heart
I wait till dawn
For there I find
Unbound I am
Again released
Towards sanctuary