When I was just a wee young thing,I was taught life's lesson well     
Ere instead of childhood revelry, mine would be a children's hell     
     
In this life of mine I've learned, you choose to live or choose to die     
That for some are chosen happiness, and for the rest to reason why     
     
I could weep and moan at life so cruel or lament in deep despair     
Would it help me if I wring my hands while pulling out my hair?     
     
Would it put me in a better place if I took it lying down?     
Nay, I think I would be just as dead if in self pity I did drown     
     
So I did, I think, the only thing my childish mind could do     
With the power of imagination  and a fantasy or two     
     
I would don a suit of honor, I would guard o'er children's door     
And like any worthwhile soldier,  I would battle evermore     
     
While most children softly slumber dreaming dreams that hold no fright     
As the children's chosen warrior  who had taken up their plight     
     
I did lay awake and listen in the darkness through the door       
For the sneaking sound his bare feet made, down hall on linoleum floor     
     
As I pray to a god who was not there, to help my battle plans go right     
Twas I alone in the dark with my Ball and Jax, who would be waging war this night     
     
With my hands I stifled giggles, my mind envisioning in the black     
Of the pain, glorious pain, to befall his feet as he stumbled on my Jax     
     
I laughed as I lay there pondering, if the makers of this children's game     
had ever dreamed that their tiny Ball and Jax would one night save four girls from shame     
     
HUSH! I hear him coming!  I have caught him unaware     
when his feet crossed o'er the battle lines. I swear his scream would curl your hair     
     
I laughed till I cried as he hopped while he tried     
to get away from my midnight attack     
Under the unscrewed hall light, he stood cursing the child       
who had left out her Jax in the night     
     
The beating was worth all the joy and the mirth     
that his dance down the hall gave that night     
     
After winning round one I vowed I would fight on     
Evermore as a soldier FIGHT ON.     
     
     
I'd decided as a very young child of abuse, that I would never go down without a fight.     
I spent my entire childhood and teenage years in a silent battle with my father.     
     
A battle never spoken of, but a battle none the less