Fracture

Fracture The night has broken herself, thinking of you. Even now, no solace for the fiery pocket of hate that I hold in my fists still burning. I played the piano side-by-side with her, Easter Sunday where no sun broke through the ossuary you called our home. She slumped upon my lap suddenly, like a grief poisoned, and her eyes rolled back into themselves, looking for reasons beyond you. The music stopped with the snap-back click of the neck. And I try to find the tune in memory, but the sharp gasp of disbelief resonates instead. And then, recalling the blank paste of your face, slapped hap-hazard on the stair, downward spiral, as she lay still: contused and dying. There are many things I've forgiven about that day those days those years of tragedy, But my own silent cowardice slaughters more of my sunrises than you do. Callous now, the shadow of you eclipsing the moon of my mouth forever silent-screaming frozen. The tomb rock rolls back and I emerge, as if from crucifixion: the images resurrected as the nightmare rift between then and now splits itself in two: her still-life portrait body, the bloody ghost of you. Notes: I wrote this poem on Eater Sunday, exactly thirty years after my father beat my mother to a pulp. She was hospitalised for three weeks, and no one thought to notify my sister and I, who were at boarding school at the time. The imagery pertains to Easter, to my rebirth from trauma. Although cathartic, it served as a reminder to the horrors of a violent youth.