I’m 16, sitting in a diner
across from my angry father,
crying into my scrambled eggs as I try to explain
explain
explain
why I don’t want to spend time with him.
My brothers aren’t there, and none of my friends,
but mostly it’s because to him I’m invisible.
Our only time together is watching TV.
He can’t understand it—all he sees is a girl
who looks vaguely like the woman
who left him when he was 33
crying—
always crying.
(And so he hated me.)
Then a stranger-angel touches my shoulder,
(who knows if that part is true),
and she tells him to listen to me.
She tells him to listen to me!
He doesn’t, of course.
He turns angry on her—
tells her to leave us alone—
and in that moment, I should have known.
I should have known.
She’s come back to me recently
as the Ghost of Childhood Past.
She flies with me above memories:
Shows me the sweet girl
who shouldn’t have had to fight
so hard to be loved.
I’m seven, buttering Wonder Bread
and taking it into his room
to watch Full House by myself
sitting crisscross applesauce
five feet in front of the television screen.
I’m 10, watching Ricki Lake.
A woman is telling how
her mother killed her baby brother:
beat him unconscious, then put him
in a cold shower to wake him up,
only he never did.
His little three-year-old body shook, and
she watched that baby die.
And all I could see was my brother of three.
All I could do was cry.
Why was I watching that? Where were they?
That wasn’t OK.
That wasn’t OK.
I’m 13, hiding my tears behind a napkin in the car
while my stepmother is driving me to school.
Literally, I’m holding a napkin up in front of my face
so I won’t have to be ridiculed for….feeling.
I can’t remember what I’m crying about.
They didn’t care, so why would I?
I’m 19. I’m in college
far the fuck away.
And I get a letter from them about
the last time I was home.
They say I have a chip on my shoulder.
I verbally abused my stepmom.
They can’t understand me–
they think there’s something wrong.
I call my mother sobbing.
She books a flight to bring me home
into her loving talons—I mean arms.
He’s always been a bastard.
She asked him once, “What about ME?”
“What ABOUT you?” he replied.
(I’ve heard this story since I was 12 years old.)
Right then, she should have known.
I guess in that moment, I should have known, too.
She had the sense to leave him,
but I was only two,
so I stayed
caught between the sick pull of her siren song and
his tidy deck, so cold and hard and clean.
Finally, the ghost-angel says
it’s time to see what they’ve made of me.
We hover over a soccer field where they play Tug of War,
and there in the middle, what they’re tugging on is me!
I’m the rope, my arms outstretched—
they’re pulling me apart.
He knows he’s losing, so he recruits her,
but it’s his mistake: she doesn’t give a shit.
My Papa and brothers just watch from the side—
a little sad, but no clue what to do.
Now we drop down onto the grass
and my babies are there in the middle with me,
but the game has changed:
I won’t let them be ropes.
I pull my arms in, wrap them around my children
and myself.
Together, we walk off the field.
We’re going to the beach instead
to build crumbly castles and play in sunset waves.
I glance over my shoulder
back at the cigar box I buried in the sand.
In it are buried these memories, and
I’ve got a map to find it, but
something tells me I won’t be coming back.
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