Victimized

Your birth brought tears of joy;

heartfelt love upon expectant wings of hope. 

Hope for a bright future fashioned on a mother's dreams of love.

Those first steps into your daddy's arms,

secrets told in confidence,

your first kiss shared with buoyant expectation,

your graduation, wedding, and then motherhood-

that bond that would forever unite us in life's cycle of joy and grief.

But hope gave way to dejection and derision took your life,

the disparaging taunts of your peers cut  your soul like a knife.

Now shattered hopes and dreams are all that's left behind,

for one dark night you left this world and on angel's wings did climb.

Oh that my love could have sheltered you from the jeers, from the lies, from the shame.

For a mother's heart never grows weary in protecting her child from pain.

Now in solitude, I wonder,

how did I not see your despair-

in the words that were left unuttered and the tears behind a blank stare

And the voices that silenced your spirit with denigration, slander, and lies

continue to haunt with their jeering

a life that was victimized.