So I Don't Unravel: Poetry

The Child Fell On Toys

There were summers

of freshly beaten bruises.

Black and soft as rotten fruit.

Not quite two years old,

the child fell on toys.

Hand-shaped new age modern toys.

An angry child

she would hurt herself when mommy

wasn't looking.

Daddy was there

to blanket mommy in soft flannel

lies.

Daddy never did drugs.

He stayed up so late to watch the

candles burn

hours of wax dribbling delicate

tendrils on the beige carpet.

The child cried a lot when mommy

wasn't home.

She hit her head on that old coffee table.

Daddy didn't do it.

Only because daddy didn't remember

doing it.

But there was guilt in daddy's muddy

methamphetamine stare.

Mommy knew.

She remembered crying late at night

when he wouldn't get off her.

Mommy threw the blanket down.

The one daddy gave her.

Mommy wanted to die.

Mommy held the child until the sun

danced through the mini-blinds

and daddy was bleeding in the

bathtub.

Mommy doesn't think she can go on.

Mommy wants to lay her head down

and sleep for all eternity.

Mommy thinks she can only live

with herself,

in the third person.