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JAC
Poems
Jun 2018
Reflecting on Innocence Under the Bleachers in the Other Field
When I was fifteen years old
I was a pacifist and I knew everything
a boy I knew from school
caught my ear with a right cross
hey ******
he said
it was all he said
it hit me as we were walking
to the baseball diamond half past four
it spun me around
and I recognized him from class
quiet panic froze my feet
facing him in stunned confusion
a ringing bounced through my skull
my chest tightened my eyes wide
I felt another before it fell
as wordlessly he swung his hand again
this time it hit my stomach
my bottom rib to the left
I tried to stop his hands again again
but it never works like the movies
and it hurt
when ringing in my right ear cut out
this I didn't know
I thought I knew everything
it hurt
when he hit my nose
there was immediately blood
on my good blue sweater
it was muffled frenzied silence
I wanted him to say something
say something say anything
tell me why you're hurting me
tears burned in my eyes
but he couldn't see them
maybe he would have stopped
but they were easily missed in the red
on the ground now I covered my face
stop it
I finally said
please
I said
if he heard me
he made no mention of it
and then there was fire in my side
his foot pulled back again
I turned away from the hurting
then fire in my back above my hip
then nothing
footsteps toward my eyes shut tight
another kick and I heard it coming
and I was ready for it to hit my face
but instead a barrage of little rocks
the gravel I lay in now in my hair
then the footsteps left
silent as they arrived
I lay there three or four eternities
aching and still so so confused
I didn't go to baseball
I hid under bleachers in the other field
man up
my dad said that evening
as I wept in the passenger seat
I was a pacifist and I knew nothing
and it hurt.
I feel like that boy laying in the gravel again every once in a while, but now I always understand why.
Written by
JAC
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rose
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Silent Heart
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Tristan Brown
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