I see the tremors that wrack your feeble limbs,

When someone raises a hand to you.

Your small hands shake as you struggle to cover

The fresh bruises embedded in your porcelain skin.

Eventually, you begin dabbling foundation on the places

Your mother’s maternal, loving fist kissed your cheeks,

But don’t you worry, darling.

By the time you turn 16,

Your makeup skills will be refined to the point

You no longer recognize yourself as the small, sobbing girl

Cowering in her closet.

I pray that you never think of yourself as a hero.

I pray you never come crashing down the stairs

As you hear your mother’s screams.

I pray you never feel your father’s drunken

Fury,

Shooting pain through your body for days to follow.

Opening your wrists will not release you from your pain, darling.

It will only turn your pain into a memorial

And you shouldn’t dedicate your body

To the things that tainted it.

Know that your being exists beyond your closet.

Know that your spirit cannot be broken

By your mother’s blows or your father’s rage

For the cyanide tablet they’re shoving under your tongue

Won’t kill you unless you choose to swallow,

And don’t you EVER choose to swallow.

Allow yourself to open your ribcage

Open your beating heart to the world

And realize

That though your house is a coffin,

That doesn’t mean the world is a graveyard.

It is time to strip your empty shelling

Step outside your closet

And live to see the day you become a mother

Who knows that words cut just as deeply as ringed fingers

And will arm herself with neither,

Married to a man who knows whiskey

And swinging fists are not a mixed beverage,

With a daughter

Who believes her closet is a place where monsters hide

Rather than a place where you hide from monsters.