This small piece of metal that hangs on a ring

Bronze or silver, just an everyday thing

Forgotten so often, thrown without care

On the table, the sofa or under the chair

 

It opens your door, it welcomes you home,

It guards what you cherish, whenever you roam.

A symbol of progress, of power, of place

Of having arrived, of winning the race.

 

It lies in your car, it sleeps by your phone

You don’t think about it until it is gone

Then panic and mayhem when you think it is lost

The house is upended, ransacked and tossed

 

Prayers offered up half plea, half demand

For that one little key to return to your hand

And when it is found relief is a ten

But you’ll wake the next morning and lose it again

 

But that is your world ….

 

Pressed in my palm it throbs with each beat

A secret defence as I walk down the street

Down laneways and paths that you casually tread

While I make escape routes and plans in my head

 

Between knuckles It shifts, no longer a key

But some kind of dagger that might set me free

Each footstep behind me, each echoing sound,

Turns silence to terror, as fear closes round

 

Where you see a tool, I see a weapon

Your throw away object, my treasured possession

For safety, in my world, can never exist,

Where shadows are watching, and threats ever persist

 

Yes, a key to my home, but a blade in disguise,

A cold bit of steel that steadies my stride

I wish that, like you, I could walk without threat,

and not bolt into panic at each silhouette

 

I dream of a night where I walk without fear,

No shadows behind me, and no danger near.

To move through the world with no need to defend,

To live without caution, to trust and depend.

 

‘Til then this small item, this thin metal shard

Is your everyday friend, and my everyday guard

As I wish for world where I can roam free

Where a walk is a walk, and a key is a key.