—IT’S HARD TO EXPLAIN, RIGHT?

 

 

 

If This is a Life-threatening Emergency Please Hang Up and Dial 911

 

Later you’ll say, Let’s pretend this never happened. But now you hoist the belt again. Buckle high and ripe. Swinging for the fences. For young skin. My step-sis. My step-brother. Splatter of blood like a shock of ladybugs dotting the side of the wall.  While I grab your leg, thick as a tree stump. Shouting for you to stop. Which you don’t. Sweat falling from your forehead to mine. A hot trickle of evil. And then there’s the cacophony of screams. Unhinged bedlam. Who knew children could shriek like that? Like monkeys run through a band saw. Children hanging onto the dark sheet of a new day. Children grown into adults. Trying to explain to a wife. A husband. A therapist. An empty bottle. Or needle. What those moments were like. And how we made it. Through.