Let's turn it to beauty and make it poetry..lest I die....
Some days go by in a haze of panic,
tears, and memories I can’t erase…
Sometimes you can see the tears even when they’re not
pouring in the traces…
Of the
deep lines of red tracks under my eyes…skin so blue...so dark…
I scrub and scrub and can’t get rid
of the black, shadowed furrows I see…
All you have to do is to see me and you see the grooves, my
sadness marks.
And
to put off the past further, to put my mind on anything else, all I see is the hurt
on the sad, ugly, fat, old woman I have become.
I can’t really see me anymore…only
the ugly parts.
Once upon a day, I suppose I was a
little girl, and the world was new and I was forging ahead…
And
once I thought I escaped.
Now, most days, I think of all the
people in my life who are dead…
And I can’t think too much or too
well anymore…cause I have to fight against the pull…of pain from times behind
me…
And no one wants to know…everyone
else has their problems.
One day I told someone and they
assured me this was the case.
And I understood.
Did it begin as a toddler…with
marks for others to see?
Did it begin when I first saw her put a plastic bag over her
face?
Did it begin when she put her head in the oven…and called
police when she realized I was watching?
When she told them she would kill her children? When I held my baby brother on the bed and
couldn’t stop him from screaming?
When he beat him so bad I felt every strike and the welts
ripped upon spaces in my heart and I wanted to die?
When he would climb into my bed at night and she’s ask some
days later, “Did he touch you?”
When he’d call me to him and tell me to look at the
creatures on the wall and he was afraid and sobbing?
When he’d sit me down and spit on my forehead and spend
minutes…seemed like hours…fixing my bangs into an S shape on my forehead…cementing
with more spit.
And
when I went outside she knew and she’d laugh…so I did too.
Did the pit began when he chased us
down the block with an ax; when he took his sledge hammer and tried to break
down the door.
Or when he got so sick, he couldn’t
breathe and the old sorrows and sympathies of a child meant to care came
roaring back with a vengeance and I could barely breathe myself…because I knew
he was and had always been in such pain.
Or did the path to hell open when I
realized that someone else had hurt the baby…someone else invited into our lives…and
no one did anything…said anything…and everyone knew that he was in love with
the child. And the child grew quiet and
fat and eventually died of pain.
Did my heart crack so that it would never mend when she
cried and cried and cried till I thought she would die from her tears? The years I spent where I couldn’t be happy…because
all I thought of was her, and I so pitied her and thought her life was unfair.
Did it
end for me the day the baby died? The
one sweet hope…the one I should have been able to save, but I didn’t. And no one will talk about him…they don’t want
to remember.
Or was
it just a years ago, when one of my walking terrors said, “she said you were
afraid of me…so I had to leave, that was my home. My life was horrible, your mother was damaged…I
was punished. Your baby brother should
have been institutionalized, he was sick from the time he was little, and that
other man went down on him in the bathroom and she knew.”
Will it ever end? The march of memories, the words I can’t
erase, shoot down or forget?
Will I be free one day?
Will I always come back there…to the memories…to the terrors...to
the nightmares…to history…
When I was young I thought I’d
bypassed it and I did do my best to survive it…
Did far more than lots of people who had anchors….
Now, it doesn’t take a whole lot it
seems…I keep falling…someone attacks me, vandalizes my property…rejects me...hurts
me…ignores me, knows me, but doesn’t feel me…doesn’t care…
And back I go…to
the time, to the films in my head that run on and on… My nights are full of
dreams where I’m being chased and killed.
I have so much and
yet….my mind goes back there…is it fair?
No, but that’s the way of life…some get their’s – without even trying - some have presents of peace, some have hope, some have
others that can show the way…but not all of us.
Will it ever end...for
me? I've tried...believe me...I've gone so far... and it just follows me.
I know I didn’t die back than…but I think it
may kill me now.
No comments:
Post a Comment