Reflection:

I wrote this poem back in October of 2000 for a friend who shared with me some of the things that happened to him when growing up at home and I could really relate to that – having similar kinds of experiences. So, I wrote this poem as a gift to him and to show that I could really relate to him.

Well, after I gave it to him, he criticized it and said it was not even close to capturing what he had gone through in his life. Then I didn’t hear from him for a while. 

He later reconnected with me and thanked me for writing the poem saying that it had deeply affected him but initially made him feel uncomfortable because he felt exposed and that I had seen right through him. He hadn’t met anyone who could do that right after learning about someone’s childhood history. 

I also intentionally misspelled a word because I’m big on rhythm when writing poetry so I shortened the correct, tedious word “lingeringly” to “lingerly” and it seemed to work.

Here’s the poem which comes from my book Burning . . . Burning Blue: https://brighterdayslifecoaching.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/The-Boy-You-Never-Knew.pdf