See that social worker standing over there.?
She has written a report about me,
She says I have a lot of clutter,
She thinks that I don’t matter,
She doesn’t know me at all,
She doesn’t know I suffered trauma,
When I was small,
She doesn’t know that I was raised by my grandfather and grandmother,
She doesn’t know that my grandfather was violent,
And my cries were silent,
All I knew was abuse,
My pain is huge,
I have a social worker who visits me,
He comes quite frequently,
My grandfather does all the talking,
My grandmother sits there whimpering like a wounded dog,
She still manages to give me a hug
At school, my teacher beats me until my fingers are blistered and sore,
My spirit is broken, my emotion raw,
Where I live there are two young men,
They don’t care that I’m just ten,
They knock me over and drag me through the woods,
They ignore my screams,
I still see them in my dreams,
Now tell me, social worker,
Do I matter,?
Or do you just see my squalor and my clutter. by Dorothy Maude my life.