daddy

The sensation of being lifted and swung around by your feet,...

Exhilarating!

Trusting and fearing your daddy's grip on you,.. to protect you, keep you safe.

Faster and faster
you can barely keep your arms crossed on your chest
your shirt crawls up your back.
faster and faster and the floor misses your head by what feels like less than an inch

then he swings you so high it feels like you are flying

you almost forget,

forget that he is mad at you

and the spinning, ends as quickly as he jerked you from your hiding place when he got home from work.

the wall came at you too fast, no time to react.

your face, no match for the plaster, is slightly crushed, and blood pours from your nose

your neck snaps back as your body slams into the wall.

its as if your blood and pain stick you tight to the wall and you slide down, a crimson line seen from across the room marking your decent.

and you, a crumpled mass of childhood flesh, can to nothing but bleed out.

you know to be more concerned about getting blood on the floor than checking for broken bones.

and the words
stupid
useless
lazy
fucking piece of shit

continue the assault as he stomps across the room flipping chairs out of his way.

you try to roll and sit up.,...

you feel the insults emphasized by his boot slamming down on you and bruising your still crossed arms.

words to vicious for one so young, they burst your organs with every kick.

words to hateful for a child, they shred your skin with every drop of blood that comes from your body.

While the assault continues, your need for tears turns inward to become a deafening whimper that only you can hear.

Then you hear silence, like the absolute silence after an atomic bomb has wiped out a city.


His emotion spent at your expense, ...


you get up,...

and, ..

and begin checking.
check to see if you can still see
check for blood on the floor
and check for blood on the wall
check if you can stand up

and then clean up the mess you made.
sit the chairs upright
wipe the blood from the wall
hang up the picture of your grandma that fell, when you slammed into the wall.

when there is no trace of violence in the front room,

you can go to the bathroom,

and clean the dried blood from your long hair,
examine the bruises for bone fragments sticking through, or funny bends that were not there before.

your emotions with nowhere to go, burrow deep,
a deep, one-way tunnel down into your core,
deep so your body does not feel.
deep so you can control the tears
so deep,... that you can survive.

tonight, like every night, you will go to sleep afraid that he will kill you while you sleep.

The next morning comes and you wake up, alive one more day.

You and your mom need to decide if the right clothes will let you go to school, or will she need to call the school and say you are sick.

Your mom tells you to go to bed and she will bring breakfast in a minute.

She tells your 4th grade teacher, you will be sick for the rest of the week, but should feel better by Monday.

You are too sore to move, so you will be in bed all day.


And you are glad that you are bedridden, because today you can't do anything wrong to make your daddy mad at you.