Invisible As A Child Poem by Margaret Alice Second

The grownups had raised themselves
and left us to our own devices - they
survived by working hard and never
realized they had a younger son

We grew up in pairs - two older sons,
twin sisters; then the lonely youngest
son, isolated and forgotten since his
existence never registered with his

Four siblings - the parents caught in
chronic fights didn't know that he wa
there, didn't care that he nearly died
for lack of love - and now it's done

He followed them into the afterlife; his
wife and kids, loving and kind, never
healed the shock of the experience
of being invisible as a child

My little brother died of invisibility,
killed by blindness, we barely knew
ourselves so couldn't acknowledge
existence living in existential crisis

Attila the Hun was fixing cars, Peter Pan
was playing with the fairies, the Duchess
fighting interminable wars, Alice reading
while growing and shrinking herself

Grandma Cinderella served everyone,
Conan growled, the Queen of Hearts
dreaming of music and playing Liszt
and Chopin on piano, we all shared

Music all the time - Mantovani playing
Mozart & Brahms, all borne aloft in a
musical fog, little brother played trumpet
the sisters sang duets, no-one noticed

This blindness was destroying him...