Domestic Life

My call

Stopped him

Saved her, maybe

She always went back 

To the living room

The noise

The man she loved.

I had my water.

I would be OK.

Everything is OK,

She would say,

And I would lose all sense

Of time

Amid lies.

She loved me

And tried to hold it together.

That was the best she could do.

He yelled and slammed and hovered

Until she said those magic words:

I’m sorry.

And then silence came

And I would listen for two sets of footsteps,

Retreating voices

Remembering the children are asleep,

Bathroom noises, box-spring noises--

Clues she was alive.

In the morning

She would say

I love you, honey,

As he left for work.

I would know then: she survived.

I lived it again:

The pain the fear

The loud noise yelling

Mom, I call.

Come to me!

She comes

And I imagine her 

A skeleton, the walking dead

A tattered life.

I am three, I know cartoons

And TV shows with magic and witchcraft:

A tattered life I can imagine.

I need a drink of water.

Stripped of life,

My mother responds to my call.

As I stop the noise

For a moment

My father

Her drunk husband

Fills the air with threats

And the unimaginable.

Look at the pictures from back then and see

How she ages in just a few years

(She would blame us later; she had to.)

I am three, like I said.

Then four, five, six, seven….

Here I am now.

Fifty-three

They are gone,

Yet I can’t stop wondering

If she will make it.