Walking back home, I saw the little girl
Clutching close a brown teddy bear
Big black eyes and quivering lips
Lost and bewildered against a shop window
And suddenly in the midst of the busy street
A memory hit with a blinding force
The sounds of the traffic dulled, and I
Stood still as people whizzed passed by
Echoes of an obscured past
Resounded in my ears once again
Pleading cries and hiccupping sobs
‘I want my teddy’ ‘I want my teddy’
I had cried as they had dragged me away
From my parents, lying cold on the hospital bed
Completely alone in the whole world then
All I had wanted was my teddy bear
I had clutched it close and it had soaked up my tears
Tears of an abandoned child, solitary and friendless
I grew up alone and my only friend
The teddy bear died a tattered death
Worn with age and torn by time
Held close for years to a tiny girl’s heart
Many years later I still awake
Crying, in the middle of the night ‘I want my teddy’
Empty arms wrapped around nothingness
A constant reminder of my solace lost
I stood still on the pavement, lost in my thoughts
Elbows nudged and people short of time
Pushed me as they hurried to their busy lives
And I kept standing there, numbed by my past
And watched the girl get lost in the crowd