Encounters with Aliens

Stuffed into a school uniform
sent off to boarding school
personal stuff in a locked box
toys, books, games, candy
and a boy scout sheath knife
which was promptly confiscated.

Probably for the best.
I might have used it, unwisely.

Gone the familiar.
Gone the comfortable.
Gone a mother's soft presence.

Gone: my own name
the name of comfort
of the home
replaced with the unfamiliar surname
harsh, hard, formal, and alien
devoid of feelings, of emotions
replaced with a shell where
such childish, womanish weaknesses
are locked away, and
allowed to shrivel.

Gone. The protection of home
the refuge of one’s own room
a personal space
replaced by a manly world
where softness is despised
weaknesses disguised
to be bullied or to bully.

Gone. A world where women rule
where comfort is a given.
now a world of men
and wanna be men
of pretend men
and the few women
the nurses, matron
strive to be the most manly.

The world of women
becomes a distant memory,
and women an alien species.

Refuge in the comforting embrace
of the woods, just beyond
the boundary of the school and
its tyrannies, where a boy can feel
free, at least for a few hours
amid the trees, secret paths,
hideaways, streams and mud.
There his imagination is finally free
to roam, to explore, to hide,
to seek within itself
what had been snatched away
if only he knew what that was.

Until he stumbled upon
a group of local girls, unrestrained
by the rules of his world
who played differently; dangerously,
who touched, who smiled, whose
games had soft, malleable rules.
He was confused and fled, his refuge
no longer a safe haven, but
strange and alien; tarnished.

He could only retreat
further within himself,
the walls of his citadel
crumbing, porous,
his dreams moist.