Debbie Walker Poet Free verse

The Child who saw too much

I heard cries
saw swarms of fist
crack heavens walls

I knew at a ripped age, how
and how not to be.

Nights, I held these ears closed
in hopes to drown this house
that shook like an earthquake.

I learned to pick up clouds of 
body parts that lingered from
stormy rains

I wiped mirrors clean with bleeding
hearts, stuck in sunken repeat.

Thorns pricked these tiny fingers
as I placed mishaps of I Love Yous
in glass jars.

I saw my mothers pinched face in a 
constant contortion of why's, masked
by pleasing smiles to ease the thunderstorm

I was nine picking up shattered formalities
calling dysfunction normal

I remained quiet, hid in cupboards that
were dollhouses

But, the floods that consumed her washed ashore
and these ears were now home to roars that once
echoed in her room 

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