Children of the Closed Door
The line wraps twice around the block, each child holding paper tags,
numbered futures handed out by strangers, hope reduced to rags.
Lights flicker over waiting rooms where sleep is traded for a name,
where mothers never come, and fathers never claim.
Fingernails scrape tally marks into drywall, counting silent days,
the only song is the hum of fans, the prayers bureaucracy prays.
In offices stacked with files, the calls ring out unanswered,
the children map escape routes in chalk, but the exit’s always slandered.
Behind every locked door, another heart tap-dances with despair,
drawing family trees on windows frosted by uncaring air.
The cafeteria’s echo chamber reverberates with forgotten years,
a symphony of foster failures and stifled, unshed tears.
Older kids barter bedtime stories for cigarettes and stolen snacks,
trading innocence for survival, always braced for attacks.
Caseworkers forget birthdays, administrators lose reports,
while children grow old in the shadow of too many courts.
There are girls who hoard letters from strangers, boys who never speak,
babies adopted by silence, toddlers trained not to be weak.
Once in a while, a kind hand tries to reach through the system’s wall,
but love is rationed, faith is spent, and trust is not recalled.
These children learn to conjure magic from cracks in the linoleum floor,
building imaginary mothers, hiding monsters behind the door.
Each new scar a tally, each bruise another law–
survival is the anthem, and their anthem is raw.
The world outside ticks on, fat with comfort and amnesia,
no headlines mark their passing, no monument for their seizure.
Some grow up feral, wild with grief, hungry for more than bread,
some learn to vanish, perfect ghosts, already counted dead.
But in every locked-down office, every metal door,
the children scratch their names in dust, promising never to be ignored.
A legacy written in fingerprints and warnings never heeded,
the system’s broken contract, a truth nobody needed.
Yet in the cracks, resistance grows–unsanctioned, unashamed,
children of the closed door refuse to be unnamed.
They rise from institutional beds with sharpened tongues and fists,
no longer begging to be wanted, no longer making lists.
Every closed door is a birthright, every file a seed,
they make legends out of absence, and hope out of need.
They won’t be sorted, won’t be lost, won’t fade like so much ink,
they storm the locked offices, forcing the world to think.
Their anthem is thunder, their lullaby a scream,
for every application stamped “pending,” every unfulfilled dream.
If justice wakes at midnight, it will come for those who failed–
the children grown to vengeance, the system stripped and nailed.
Their hearts may be broken, but their rage is not contained,
children of the closed door–haunted, hurt, unchained.