He flowed through me
like molten gold
running down the gutters
of a sacked Jerusalem.

The heat generated
that fire brewing and bursting
crumbled the stone I had placed
around my heart.

Only if for the night
when you peer at me through heavy lids
I don't mind getting lost
losing my senses
my "good senses"

to carry with me a memory
of you, and I in this place
no regrets, no solemn words.

This wasn’t the first time
daddy had asked Mary to come into his room,
but I was so surprised
that she called daddy by his first name
but I didn’t say a word.

That mad look in daddy’s eyes
shone as bright as those sprinkled stars
as he made his way beside the bed.

“Come now darlin’,
don’t make me beg for ya.
I need my wife tonight I can’t help it.”

His breath puffed out
in waves of sour miasmic *****
as he bent down low to kiss Mary on her head.

He stayed there
just seeming to breath in her hair for a moment.
Mary stayed stock still
in the bed rubbing my head
telling me it would alright.
I didn’t know what was happnin’.

“Can’t you see the girls are scared tonight?”
Her voice rattled horasly,
as if she was scared but she lay there firm.

Daddy looked around suddenly
as if tryin to find something lost.

“Where’s Kylie?” he asked
scratchin his head
as if that made him think better.

He peered into the dark,
his eyes squinted
a bit as he tried to see through the dark.

He shook his head
but I sat up and said
“right here daddy.”

I went up to touch his arm but Mary held me back.

“Don’t touch him.” She whispered to me,
then patting me on my arm until I quieted.

“I don’t know Don,” Mary said to him,
“Probably out like usual
lookin’ up at those stars again.
You know how she loves her stars.”

Daddy laughed again
then took Mary’s hand
pullin her up from the bed.

“Come on now Martha.”
He cooed kissin her on her hand.
“You’ve got to leave the girls to sleep on their own.”

Mary tried to resist but daddy only laughed lacing his fingers in hers.

I lay still that night,
Haley held tight on my arm cryin silently.
She was thirteen  
and kept whisperin over and over

that it wasn’t right what he did to her.

“Why are you cryin?” I asked her,
but she only told me to hush and close my eyes.

It must have been about an hour later
when I heard sounds commin from the other room.
The headboard was hitting against the wall
and daddy was grunting while Mary’s voice,
small was whimpering, almost cryin.

I was ten years old on that old farm in Georgia.

My mother died when I was three,
leaving behind three girls for my daddy to take care of.
He ‘took care’ of us good.
When mama died he took to the drink.

Sitting day in and day out
on that old gritty brown chair
pouring poison down his throat.

I’ll never forget that one night
when the wind outside was cryin' out
to no one particular

and the unforgiving cold
slithered in like a mist
through the cracks of our wooden house.

Daddy had been talking in his sleep again
to our mama,
which was odd to me cause she was dead,
but that never stopped him.

We knew then,
my sisters and me,
that he was drunk,
like always,
but when he started hollering
and crying for mama to come back
we knew that he was done out.

We huddled together
in my older sister, Mary’s bed,
while she lulled me and Haley to sleep
rubbing our hair back,
singing a sweet lullaby
that I distantly remember our mama singing to us.

That’s when it happened.
Daddy shouted out “Martha!”
real loud
as if he could hear her voice
and came running to where we were sleeping in my sister’s arms.

“Martha.” Whispered daddy.
He looked at Mary, eyes only a slit height open
before he leaned against the wall waiting.

“Why don’t you leave these girls alone to there bed and come on in with me?”


Mary, I remember
turned white as the moon on a clear night.
Her clutch on Haley and me
became like iron
as she stared with wide eyes at daddy.

“Not tonight Don.” She said shakily.

I wanted him so badly, that I’d do anything.
Except go all the way.
I stayed true to that
and waited like a giddy schoolgirl till we were married.

But by then and now, his love for me dimmed.
I can see it in his eyes when he looks at me.

That light that I would wait for every night
when he came home tired from work
would send me soaring.

And when we kissed,
oh boy,
it’s as if I tasted that metallic heat of the stars all over again.

But it’s different now.
He’s found someone else.
I know he did.
I can feel it like only wives can
when your husbands falling from your hands.

My past was comming back to me.
My own Haley came back
to take what was mine again.

I know it
I can feel it like only a sister can.
She was always a ****,
first takin away my Scott and now Chad.

She comes back to taunt me
as Mary comes back to sooth my soul.  

And my love’s fallen for her.  
The romance is gone,
and I pleaded with him
that romance, that blissful romance
would become something more
sober and enduring,
but his ears were closed.

He said he found another,
plain just like that,
someone who made his heart go pitter-patter
as mine still does for him.

Though he would never leave me,
that I knew certainly,
he chose to desert me in other ways.

He’s never home,
he does not call,
those sultry notes
he would have delivered to me
stopped coming,

and that embarrassing delivery boy
that would sing out for all to hear
that horrible three lined serenade never came knocking on our door.  

Silence.
That was all that was left of us.

I sit here, now,
on my porch faraway from that place that I had called home,
away from the hate,
pain,
and depression that had festered inside me.

But I sit here,
also faraway,
from the smell of the sweet honeysuckle
that would grew savagely on the wooden fence.

I sit faraway from the shimmering dew
that I so loved when laying out in the open country
for acres and acres that was my backyard.

I sit faraway from the luminous sky
that had so often taken me as a lover would in its never-ending arms.

I sit here in Long Island, New York
with a husband and no children to fill my ears.
I say now to myself,
a woman of twenty
that I only ran from one hell
to become so trapped within another.

Chad.

That’s his name. My husband.
We ran away together when I was seventeen
to New York so we could become husband and wife.

How was I to know that life would turn out like this?

I bet your asking yourself, “Does he beat her?”
No.

No. He doesn’t beat me. He wouldn’t dare.

But instead he does something else;
he hurts me, but in my heart.
Just like my daddy did.

I never thought that I could love someone so much as I love Chad.
Every time I see him
I can feel my heart skip a beat.
Its as if I were seventeen again when we first meet.

The sun had hid behind the clouds that day.

All else was quiet.

I lay out spreading my fingers
along the wheat like grass that covered me entirely
as I stared up towards the twilight;
wishing that I had only to jump
so I could soar among those bright dots against the cover of the night.

If I closed my eyes
I could almost taste those bright metallic drops,
like warm milk spilling over the brim of the morning pal.

That fantasy I harbored
to lay on the cresent moon like a hammock against the night,
only to have it dip me into the slosh of the Milky Way.
That’s what I long for.

Anything but here.

All I ever wanted,
all my dreams
lay nestled between those stars,
and as the morning sun peeked out from over the horizon,
as the dew that covered my body
rolled down gently
to form tiny shimmering impressions against each blade of grass,

as the first bird began to sing its song
to welcome the heated smell of lilies
and the fading of Pluto before the dawn,

I felt as if I would cry.

I knew,
when that sun shone
in all its concentrated rage
that my life would go to hell again,
as it did every day of my life.

Daddy would wake up.

All would go to hell.

This is the feeling of a slow smoldering
it simmers in the pit of my heart
-this mass of bloodied pulp- alive with emotion and breath

This is the feeling of eruption
with exertion my heart is squeezed
desperate as the child to get the last bit of paste from the toothpaste tube.

This is the feeling of shaking
of unwanted nerves and anticipation
of salted tears help back by nothing but glue and willpower

This is me, trembling from the hopelessness of it all
wanting to fight, to be stronger, to be more like my hero
but failing miserably-alone in the dark-crying like a child with no night light.