Breadcrumbs
by
, 07-26-2009 at 02:59 AM (2652 Views)
Breadcrumbs
I wonder if he cried when he was driving away.
(The one time I needed to cry for an audience,
I thought of this) –
Long fingers gripped around the steering wheel,
Chest heaving,
Music muted -
Oh, brother mine.
The break came once-upon-a-time ago
With a slow, quiet kind of stab in the dark (the worst kind),
Not very long across, but very deep -
A loss of trust, oozing out of the gash she opened
Like angry, burning pus.
(Evil stepmothers do exist,
And they won’t let you go to the ball,
And they’ll stick you in a cage and feed you toxic candy
Until you’re thick with hurt.)
Not until the whole of him had leaked out
Did we realize it would never be the same -
But we left a solid trail:
Horsey-back rides,
Space shows and movies no one remembers;
A world of our own,
A city of movies and books stacked high –
The last game we ever played -
Stacked high to make a city that spanned a world;
Lincoln logs and mutant football;
Hiding in the closet,
Much too excited about being in trouble.
Long after the knife had been tossed away
The hole gaped open still
(Perhaps the shard of a demon’s mirror caught within) -
And who can blame him?
That pain is unforgettable.
And on the other side,
The one who let them get away,
The one with a thousand regrets
And a heart of gold,
The one who seemed to have been
Numbed, fed a poison apple,
And lay trapped, sleeping, in a glass coffin,
Woke up to find that children do grow,
And they do remember.
Oh, father mine.
I stood at the top of the stairs,
The voices rising below me -
One that could have made Hephaestus shudder,
So angry, so hard, so immovable-
The other held up against it, but trembled
With a child’s hurt.
I could only sit,
And stare –
I can’t remember what happened.
I think I blocked it out-
What I said before he left,
“Please, don’t go-“
I hope. I hope.
It wasn’t the stepmother or the witch, really –
It was that they had to leave home that hurt the most.
And when he was driving away,
Trying to reach the age of forty in five minutes,
His whole body trying to hold up
Against the flood that threatened to rise up through that
Gaping hole -
The little boy was still there, waiting to be held and told,
“I’m sorry”
And
“I still love you ” -
I have to say, I hope he cried.
I don’t know.
Then there would be some kind of hope that
He’s still there.
Home's still here.
We’re all still here.
We’re all still here.