They Never Knew, A poem

They Never Knew

Her heels click across the floor

Pausing, she opens the old church door.

Heads across the room turn

Making her hands tremble and her cheeks burn.

Then it comes–

That quiet rush

That gentle hum

The deafening hush–

The sound of 1,000 words spoken

The silent looks seeing the 1,000 rules she’d broken.

Tears sting her eyes

And she puts her head down

A baby cries,

And an old woman frowns.

The preacher’s voice rises and falls

The whispers echo across the walls;

She sinks silently into a pew

And thinks, “If only they knew.”

They saw a girl in a short red dress

Sky-high heels, her hair a mess.

What they didn’t see

Was a silent plea;

Eyes puffy from how much she’d cried

A heart broken from watching her Father die.

She’d become an orphan the night before

She had no place to call home anymore.

When the service was over

She left the church pew

Her heart breaking,

And no one ever knew.

-AK

This doesn’t just happen in churches…it happens in schools…at work….everywhere. We are so fast to judge people without bothering to actually care about them. Gosh…we’ve got to stop!