My Safe Place Poem by Claudia Krizay

Drawings of seventy three people,
A map of the place where they all live,
I am amongst these people, and
I can hear them in conversation,
Although nobody who lives outside of this room can-
I have given this place a name- a self-fabricated name-
I have found happiness here
Within this world I call my own.
This is my safe place-
This place where skies are touched with clouds of pink and gray,
This place where all is quiet, except for the rushing sound
Of the clear water in the creek that runs through.
Here in this place where nobody cares
What time of day people go to sleep or what hour that they awaken-
This is the place where nobody ever gets angry or slights one another-
Here where we dance when it rains and
Where we laugh when the sun is shining over that creek,
But the sun never burns us.
I have locked the silver gate that exits to the world outside,
So that untrustworthy and belligerent people cannot enter-
This is what I have called my safe place, although
Some say it is dangerous in some sort of way.
Some say that it is dangerous to deny what is real, and
To live in a self formulated world,
Ignoring the lives of three billion people,
Feeling no empathy for those in pain and those fighting in wars out there-
While listening to voices that only I can hear or those I care to hear.
I feel that that world has not been kind to me and
There is so much out there that I fear and it is with great irony
That people are so fearful of my own unfamiliarity- although
To me people who live in this great earth outside of my safe place
Are just as foreign to me as I am to them- I must say that
If I were to continuously wear the key to that silver gate about my neck-
Keeping myself safe here amongst my made up community, I can
Live in my world and others live in theirs and we won't have to fear one another- as
Unfamiliarity is synonymous with danger to so many people.
The sun shall shine upon both places and everyone shall be safe, and
Nobody- not myself, my own special friends or
Those living in the world outside of here
Shall ever get burned…