Child soldiers march at night.
Homeless veterans haunt the Boulevard
You know longer patrol the Wall for this city’s Miserables.
Even Guardians get old.
Even Guardians get old.

Once you tended to Valjean and Javert
Protecting one from a crackhead son
Making sure the nursing home gave the other his HIV meds
That was then.
Now, even the memory is, “just too much, too much.”

Instead we find each other
through fragments of song
“Drifting on a memory/
Ain’t no place I’d rather be…”

The Guardian by Kim Pearson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.