I made him the sign. / Three fingers are the promises, / Akela said,

I made him the sign.

Three fingers are the promises,
Akela said,
taking a finger of his own
and swirling it
around the circle
of my thumb and little finger

His finger
was poking through the loop
of my hand

like the frayed rabbit
that comes out of the hole
and round the tree
to make the bowline
he would later try to hitch
to something in my head
but which never caught.

And this circle,
this represents the world.

The bare pressure of his experienced skin brushing mine
was enough to convey the promise that
I could encircle a planet with neat, sallow digits,
encompass all the peoples;
that my wide-eyed squeak
might reverberate as a solemn vow to do them good.

He didn’t touch me again,
and the belief ebbed
as the weeks went on.
The sports and the log-chopping
and the knots and the rough-housing
and the church remembrance day boredom
whittled down my excitement.

I’ve sometimes wondered if ever
that thoughtful touch of his,
his annually rehearsed generational moment,
ever set off something in a kid’s mind
that did not leave them
until they went to war.

the p word is a collection of 307 articles, blogs, podcasts and threads in the voices of pedophiles and others who oppose adult child sexual contact and sexual exploitation of children. Despite our mainstream views, this content is frequently removed from social media or blog sites because openly discussing pedophile attractions or avowing them are not tolerated. Our side of the conversation continues here.

editor at the p word net | Except where stated, all images are AI and do not depict real people. | Download the whole site.

in april, i open my bill

poem: earliest memory, 1977

poem: glass door, 1983

benjamin harker

Paedophiles do not pursue the lives of cuckoos purposefully. We begin loved and welcomed. We are babies, then children and we grow up alongside you.

benjamin harker

I do not remember / my mother’s chin / whiskers as she / lifted and fed

benjamin harker

And I, a head full of bricks, swung thoughtless / around the top post, through the gap, crashed / through the surface of that great, glass, perpendicular sea.

Paedophiles do not pursue the lives of cuckoos purposefully. We begin loved and welcomed. We are babies, then children and we grow up alongside you.

I do not remember / my mother’s chin / whiskers as she / lifted and fed

And I, a head full of bricks, swung thoughtless / around the top post, through the gap, crashed / through the surface of that great, glass, perpendicular sea.