By Richard Mather
I cannot remember my first word,
But I do recall my first sentence:
Cribbed in a box with the lid on,
Kept under house arrest
By a familial jailer.
Sheets were hot wet prisons.
Hands larger than God
Executed your angry reprisals.
I was moon-stricken, heart-bitten
By your iceberg pettiness,
And your lazy shameful fumblings.
I could not win as you raged like some fallen idol.
Verbal bullets pierced the sweating air
When hard white fingers tore my skin
And pulled at my hair.
No night was safe from your hooks
Or sour tongue.
You were the immovable statue
And your new husband a grey shadow
Flat and cringing,
Cowering like a frightened schoolboy
Beneath the blackboard.
A litany of orders diminished us.
We sang distant tiny echoes
Of your merciless overture.
You always were the one
With the chalk in your hand.
The strings snapped from your fingers,
Unleashing a tentacled monster
Lavishing its poison over gaunt faces.
You should have finished me
Before I got you.
Like a wounded animal grasping
At its half-devoured prey
You shrank in the doorway,
Hissing and spitting as I gathered up
The bags and clothes that littered the garden.
I had to escape, they tell me.
I had to escape.
My departure was almost a calling.
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