There once was a girl, hair golden and fair. Call it cliché but that’s your burden to bear. On tiptoes she stood, each morning and night, outside her parents’ bedroom, paralyzed with fright. “Hand me that bottle,” her father would shout. She never understood what that as about. Scurrying fast, she’d run out to the bus. Her parents paid her no attention, only when they must. As she grew older, a slight, scared young woman she became. Her nightmares followed her, always the same. And like shadows on the wall, her bruises followed her loyally, “No,” was the answer she used to answer their call. Her parents died at the bottle and that girl wish she knew, why it is they loved her but killed her too.