Boxed red wine and the stench of cigarette smoke
seeping through the cracked door of the back porch
brings back memories of childhood
Another hole in the wall resides next to the liquor cabinet
the size of your father's forehead
You wrote a novel on your wrists with your fingernails
about the stitches he needed from the fall
You wept to me
Saying the fissure in the wall felt
like the countless hours your mother spends
in front of the computer screen playing spider solitaire
She forgot to ask how your first day of school was
for the second year in a row
You don't remember the last time she slept
You said every night spent in that house
taught you what the inside of a coffin feels like
The photograph next to your bed
of a smiling family of four
taken on your seventh birthday
Whispers a story of a mother who refuses to speak
the name of her firstborn child and
Writes its own eulogy
about a light that was put out
fifteen years after it was ignited.
You said time does not heal wounds
it just furthers you from who you once were
what you once had
Now you wake up every night gasping for air
after dreams of a devastated car wrapped around a tree.