You want to protect your child. You want to put your arms around her and curl your body over her and take any blow the world tries to give her. You want her to wear your love like a cloak, a cloak that will ward off any evil.

But you don't get to be there every minute. You don't get to be on the school bus, you don't get to be in the hallway. You don't get to be out behind the school where the teachers never check.

And when she comes home and you ask if she's alright and she tells you everything's fine, you don't get to peer behind her eyes and see what makes you think it isn't and when she just closes up all the more when you try to coax her out, you don't get to know what is lurking there in her own dark. You don't know what she needs protection from.

When she keeps getting sick and not wanting to go to school and looking even sicker when she has to and starts having trouble in class when she was always such a good student and you keep asking if anything's the matter and she starts to avoid you, to spend all her time in her room and there you are, wanting to protect her, wanting to stand up for her, but not knowing what's behind the curtain, what's got her so afraid, until finally, without your ever seeing it, the thing she has to be afraid of, what's most dangerous to her now, is herself, the one being you can never protect her from, and after it's too late, after it's done, all you can think, think over and over again, is, “You failed; you failed to protect your child”.

Copyright 2011 James B. Chevallier