My little gobstoppers,
Larger than life, lodged in caustic jaws—
never be silenced,
but silence them all.
For there’s no failure veiled in
the sweetness of a metaphor,
for the hard-fought
fissures that feature you:
The cracks on the pale surface of youth
that reveal that rainbow,
that soulful spectrum in you—
of you.
For all your toffee stuck tongues
and candied cold stone,
for all your teeth cracked and cut,
and born again, just
getting to the soft centre of it all.
Life is all the sweeter
for the core of you.
