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.

Everyone thinks there's something.
Everyone believes that the gods know them personally,
sympathies with them on a minuscule level.

I like to pull people out from there delusions
as I reap them out from this world
making sure to let them know

if there are gods they’re not going to save you.

I have the power to take you in any fashion,
your name was marked and so you go

I never know who goes where and honestly I don’t care.

Those at peace melt away
like liquid sugar on the tongue
they are absorbed into the air
sinking like honey into bread,

and others that fight me
shatter like glass.
They're ground into nonexistance,

Poor *******.

I cry a silent cry of anguish
I'm never relieved through tears.
Instead the agony drops into my heart
forming an ocean vast.

Too vast.

The struggle against suffering is for the healthy,
and those who dive into that pool let themselves drown,
swallowing pain,
memories,
and disappointment
until their lungs are too full.

When they open their mouths
sending out their final battle cry against life
their own voice is strewn with the voices of many,
the voice of all others before them who have chosen this path of destruction.

Only the first to enter had the privilege
to let their voice be heard in that last and final scream
as they sank down into the darkness
lost forever from life
and even eluding me.

They were in a place where no man wishes to go,
where fate has no hold
and death and life quiver before the decimation
that awaits the two biggest killers of mankind.

All are accepted into that bleak and glorious place,
and those who do not
receive their penance
while others are forced through their own will
to take upon themselves the responsibility
to inflict horrors to their body,
spirit and soul.

Those who start on their own path of death
with his assistance
experience something much worse
than what I would have devised for you,

we are ourselves the worst of enemies.