What Ails The Child Poem by Cece Dev

What Ails The Child



They come up and ask,
“what ails thee child? ”
As if they cared.
Hooked noses and plastered smiles
we see as they seek an answer.
And the child replies,
“oh nothing mistress”
she reaps the lie
Just what they want to hear.
But what ails the child
is crystal clear
if one only bothered to search.

They chase down the running waif
She screams “go away! oh please don’t stay”
and the minstrel thinks she can’t be saved.
So she asks
“what ails thee child? ”
Singsong voices and masking lies
the time passes by
without an answer
and soon the child takes off and flies
down the street
towards the bay

And in she flings herself in
to be cleansed
in remembrance of what it is to be
and the Captain comes down from his perch
and bends down close and asks of her
“come now, come now, what ails thee child? ”
She looks at him and starts to cry
he would know why, but he’s the ignorant.

She brings herself
so close to shore, she can take no more
she dusts herself off
and shades her eyes
away from the heat in her demise.
And when she looks down she sees padded feet
and up in the sky, a lone crow flies
and he looks down on her and she feels small,
it seems to call,
“oh, no, what ails thee child? ”
and he would see but the times are wild.

Soon she frees herself from tide
and the old maiden chides,
“out of there, out of there! What ails thee child? ”
She stands up and comes to the corner
asking no more
of the bairn who came from the sea
who speaks of the
trouble and toils
a child must face
and so she makes haste
away from the streets,
away from the bay,
away from the people and all that they say.
For it’s all fake.


No one understands
the ropes and band
and so she goes on without a word
though the people think she absurd,
she manages to hide away from the lies,
away from the village
away from the sun
away from good times
away from the fun

and one morning she stood under an open sky
So she looks up in dismay
and to this day,
she hasn’t found
someone to say
what ails thee child.

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