A Child’s Innocence Poem by Man Yi Chloe Wong

A child,
unlike us,
never minds
kissing his mum and dad
in front of his friends.

A child,
unlike us,
never minds
telling others how he feels
directly.

A child,
unlike us,
never minds
being himself.

A child,
unlike us,
never fakes a frosty smile
and uses it to cloak his intrigue.

A child,
unlike us,
never plays “hard to get”
to gratify his vanity.

A child,
unlike us,
never
gets a foe’s name inscribed
on his memory,
remembers it
and decides to give him a
bitter revenge
after he has attained a certain degree of
leverage.

I believe that
even a child with a surname like
Hitler
would have done something good,
and did them wholly out of
a child’s innocence or even
out of
love.

We all have been children
before
we grow up to be vengeful,
hostile,
rebellious
and abominable.

I believe that
it is the wooing after fame,
power,
wealth,
that makes a soul
so pure like a child’s
rot.

Some people grow up and transform into a
killing machine.
Some deviate from moral and become a
pervert.
But most of us
simply Grow up
and
watch our most primitive innocence
decay,
and witness it being carefully reformed with
sophistication.

And so,
since we all grow
pain in this world could never be
banished.