Dear Editor,

Faking love may be more cruel than hate, since you are more able to safeguard against what you know — as opposed to deception.

Claiming love for a child under a cloak of sinister design could be similar to giving a gift of poison coated with a candy appeal.

To say, for example, that May is Child Month, may be the biggest mockery to a child when in the same month several are missing, raped, and killed.

To say May is the month of the child when several gather at the traffic lights as windscreen wipers may be nothing more meaningful than water bouncing off a duck’s back.

When many are orphaned by the fact that parents are ‘fast’ hustlers whose philosophy is ‘now or never’, how does the month of May alter their outlook?

When fathers are alive and are behind bars serving life for a crime they hope the child will revenge, how does the Child Month celebration help?

How does the month of the child make an inroad into changed introspection when all they know is early pain neglect and rejection?

When a 13-year-old is carrying a pregnancy for a fully grown man, where is the lighthouse that the adult world is sending when a child is mothering a child, and another child, extending the drama?

What balm is Child Month sending when abortion is high and hopes are dry, when mental and physical abuses are more familiar than toys and hugs, and adulthood is confronted prior to adolescence? When the schooling of a child becomes the job of the pavements and the streets, what is the the refreshing dew that May is now sending?

If may is Child Month, what of the child?

Homer Sylvester

Mount Vernon, New York, USA

h2sylvester@gmail.com