Unraveling
i.
her eyes burn from bath-water steam and not enough
sleep. She is sucked deep within the heaviness of the
room, pulled into a sense of not-so-well being
just like before
when fear trapped her resistance and replaced it with
denial, when the funereal sense of the room emitted a
comforting grace disguised by dolls from foreign
countries who waited like icons on shelves she could
not reach…when ironically, a praying-hands nightlight
produced votive-candle shadows against darkened walls
and transformed her bed into an all-too-appropriate
sacrificial table. she'd lie on snow-white-printed sheets
wet with his semen and her blood, and oh, yes, tears,
which came afterwards and always.
ii.
she drifts swiftly, unwillingly into that other time, that distant place
just like before
when no amount of soap and water under torrents of daily
showers and scrubbing herself raw with her mother's
vegetable brush seemed to make her clean enough
and never again pure enough for god or her mother.
when no amount of powder (tabu), her mother's favorite,
seemed to smother the malodorous smell - thrusts of anger
aimed where innocence used to live and breathe
with no thoughts of dying.
iii.
she methodically fingers the fine line between a goodnight
kiss and a whiskey-laced mouth pressed hard against
bruised lips; tattooed across too-thin wrists self-inflicted
on the day she first realized she was not like the others
who laughed with friends while she dilly-allied behind,
trying to hide what branded her different
a freak of his nature.
her mother's nonchalance and frigid stares produced a
prophesied warning of damnation and god's punishment
for little girls who told false truths only after she experienced
her first suicide attempt the same year jfk was killed, two
days after her 10th birthday, one day after she heard them
whispering there would never be any children, any life
inside her because of HIM
now and forever amen.
iv.
she methodically fingers the fine line between a goodnight
hug and being held down by powerful hands that have opened
old wounds for the last time. she lingers too long in the tub
with clawed feet - her representation of HIM - the one who
forced her to float in warm calgon and send forth perfumed
swirls of red screams in blue water. her poisonous dye shot
out in defense of her right to be left alone.
she is unraveling - quietly disentangling
to separate herself from false truths and reality,
to rise above the past and be whole
for the first time
she will have the strength to close the door
just as he did before
when she called out his name…daddy daddy!
© 2010 Judi Schepka