Dane learned early what silence meant inside a crowded room,
His father’s eyes were weathered stone, his mother’s voice a sigh.
He built a fortress out of fear, a childhood half in bloom,

Where questions fell like broken glass, and wounds refused to die.
He carried anger like a torch; it kept the night at bay,
While friends grew up, he merely grew in walls of self-defense.
Every smile felt counterfeit, each kindness slipped away,
Because trust, he thought, was weakness cloaked in fine pretense.
But time has teeth, and youth decays when faith’s denied too long,

He left his home to chase a dream that seemed both fierce and frail.
A college city called his name, the hum of human throng,
Where people spoke of meaning more than money, fame, or mail.
There, books became his quiet balm—he learned the mind’s design,
That wounded hearts constrict themselves, repeating what they know.

He saw his parents mirrored then, their fear was also mine,
A curse in need of breaking, if one dared to let it go.
In lecture halls, he met his ghosts in Freud and Maslow’s word,
In classmates’ eyes he saw himself with empathy renewed.
The truth was simple, yet profound—the past could be deferred,

But not denied: to heal, one must confront what once was crude.
One late night by the river’s edge, his thoughts became a prayer,
Not to some god beyond the sky, but something deep within.

He whispered thanks for every hurt that sculpted him aware,
For only through his fracture could he grow beyond his skin.
He started calling friends again, though trust came slow and odd,
Began to hear his mother’s tears, not as a form of blame.
Forgiveness came like gentle rain from some forgiving god,

Or maybe from that hidden place where love and logic came.
Through understanding, Dane rebuilt the house he’d burned before,
With windows wide to let in air, not walls to shut out pain.
He learned that strength was not the fist but opening the door,
To let compassion find its way through every loss and gain.
Now when he speaks, his words are scarred, but tender at the seam,

He tells the young that desperation isn’t just despair.
It’s sometimes the great crack that lets through a deeper dream,
The place where broken boys become the men who finally care.
For Dane, the past still whispers soft, but doesn’t hold his hand,
He knows that love is learned, not found, through patience more than pride.

From wounded child to thinking man, he’s come to understand—
That pain, when faced, transforms to peace no rage can ever hide.

…

DCG