Becoming The Muse

She sits, quietly asking for change,
on the pavement of a busy road.
Two small children beside her.
A boy and a little girl.
They are silent.
Too silent.

Children that small shouldn’t know how to be quiet.

The boy stands in oversized clothes,
Maybe his father’s clothes,
wearing a weight he hasn’t grown into yet.
Watching over his young sister.

The sun would shine.
Storms would blow.
And father would yell.
That was just how life used to be.

Father yells no more.

A mother and her children sit in the shadows now,
her face is turned the horizon,
toward the hint of a rising sun.
And a stranger with a kind face,
and hopefully change to spare.