I don't remember much
From when I was one
Or two,
Even three or four,
But I remember when the towers fell;
When my teacher,
Weeping and crying,
Stumbling, blinded by grief,
Onto the playground,
Screamed through a throat of desperate tears
Get inside
Get inside
When I was five.

You picked me up that day.
Brought me home.
Never let me know
What was going on
And maybe that was a good thing
At the time
But maybe you should have let me know
At the time
Because that's my first memory of when you
Really
Yelled at me.
At five
On the day the towers fell.

Soon, I began to notice
The world around me.
It was small and childish
But weren't we all?
My little friends
Would show me napkin notes
Nestled between
A lunchable and a cookie
"Don't forget to smile"
"You are my sunshine"
"I love you"
I guess I forgot.
I guess I was the rain.
"I love you" was what parents
Did not
Say to each other
Every day.
"I love you"
Were the words I never heard
From my mommy.

I know you yelled at me then,
In elementary school,
But I can't recall a specific example
The haze of ignored memories
Will never become any more clear
But I remember middle school
In every vivid detail
Because it's when
I started to believe you.
"You're not good enough."
"You're one sorry excuse for a daughter."
"Why would I ever be proud of you?"
The curse words flew
Through the air,
Projectiles aimed at their target,
And they hit the bullseye
Every time.

It's a miracle
That I love words so much
Because with you,
Reading between the lines
Hurt
Even more.

Because you couldn't make me into you,
I withdrew.
The friends I used to be able to count
On two hands
Soon left me
With no choice but to not lift a finger.
I forgot how to interact
With people my age.
My mind was unrelenting;
My voices remained the same:
All were you.

By the time I was thirteen,
My heart had been broken.
Never by a boy
Or a friend,
But by you,
The person a little girl
Was supposed to love
More than anyone in the world.
You came to the meetings
You came to events
You put on quite the show
Encore, encore.

At fifteen,
I began to question.
What was I doing wrong
How could I ever count
All the flaws you saw?
What better way to begin
Than with an end?

I wrote a note
And walked to the creek
In the backyard.
Staring at the water,
I allowed the hurt I'd bottled up
Over my lifetime
To spill out
In a flood of desperation.
The weight on my shaking shoulders
Brought me to my knees.

You were at a party with your friends.

I wept over why I'd never been
Lucky enough
To have a person I could trust
With anything at all.
If I needed anything from you,
I'd learned to keep my mouth shut
And bury it.

I stepped into the ice cold water,
Numb to everything
But the sorrow.
And I knelt,
Head bowed,
And pulled out the lighter.

But I didn't have the fortitude
To kill myself.
You'd made sure of that.
It was just another failure of mine
As I held the flickering flame
To the corner of the letter.
I let the fire consume
Everything
Until I felt
The heat on my finger
And then I let it go.
My words to you
Were fully consumed
Before they hit the water.


Now at seventeen,
I can't look to the future
Without reflecting on the past.
It was never abuse to you,
Was it?
Because I never let you see
What you did to me.
Truth be told,
You won't ever understand
Because by the time you start to wonder
You'll be dead and gone
And I won't even care
Because I won't even know.