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.
