There is nothing like a disaster,
To sweep me with relief.

Beforehand stress and sadness fester,
Rob tranquility like a thief.

But once the impact passes,
And I have straightened some things out,
There's nothing like a disaster,
To make me grateful for a drought.

Having been in his chair all day,
It wasn't clear
I did not know.
I did not realize.

At nine years old,
Nine that day, January 1,
How could I be blamed?

I went on about life.
I was not grown,
I did not notice,
I knew no better.

In fact, I don't remember hearing...
My mother's frantic voice,
The intermittent sobs,
The paramedics pulling up.

But in the wake,
In the subsequent hours and days and YEARS,
Ten or eleven years,
I've grown. I understand...

Those things now give me chills just to acknowledge.
I still can not remember the commotion, but that's not what matters.
That disaster didn't shake me, you know.

But his absence is the loudest sound there is.
It's rang in my ears for the past decade or so.
It's the loudest sound I've ever heard.

I’m not sure if
we’ll really spend
our lives as one
sharing days
and
living life in tandem.

I can't remember my dreams lately. I am frightened in my sleep. I tiptoe around in bed.
Sometimes I explode. He makes me.
I stop thinking about that and him and how I used to tiptoe around the world.
That house became my prison, my whole world.

Odd how something so unpleasant trapped me somehow.

I thought it would be good. It wasn't good. I wish it hadn't happened.
It makes me nervous to think about. I tap my foot very quickly when it comes to mind.

I have to get away.

I did but I didn't; not in my head.
In my head he is still upstairs, across the hall, and I have to lock that door, put a chair under the handle too, so he doesn't hurt me.
He didn't, but I always knew he would somehow.
If only I could have locked up my door, prevented that black mass of air, that stench of pathetic hate and crippling insult from infecting my entire being. A little like this old restaurant I've driven by, still reeking with the stench of tobacco from back when that was still allowed.
He's not here anymore but I can feel it. The afterglow.

After-shadow?