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| A picture of me in the Florida trailer, at the age of four, eating a giant peach. |
The old double wide we moved to
And the above ground pool,
Chickens and red ants nipping at my bare
Feet as I shrugged toward the pool in
My bathing suit and yellow floaties.
Somehow I was a child once and I
Look back to Florida on a dim
Morning in California, as a 34 year
Old, still dealing with you on your cane
Rocker in my brain. The cane rocker
You held me in as a baby, how I wish
I knew it still. Not you, but the furniture,
You are a waste of oxygen.
But back to the grass and chickens.
We lived with your sister and her strange family
We drank milk in tall glass tumblers with a diamond
Shape pattern, full of ice cubes since it was so
Unearthly hot.
I loved the above ground pool, it was safe.
Floating in water and wading while the heat pummeled my
Forehead, not yet knowing that the trauma you
Caused would still be in my forehead to this day.
The house had fleas. You told your sister, and she didn’t believe you.
Even though I was covered in so many, I developed a fever.
On the dining chair, as you applied calamine lotion,
You began to count, 1, 2, 3. With that crusty cool cotton ball
Dabbing against the bites. You counted over one hundred
Flea bites, and yet we stayed. How?
How could a mother do that to her child, and not
Thoughtfully leave and find somewhere new, somewhere flea-free?
A hotel? An apartment? But we were poor—that’s right, isn’t it?
And oh yeah, you didn’t give a shit about me.
Did we sleep all together in one room? My mind gets fuzzy.
All the pain bundling into one ulcer, one pock mark I am
Still trying to heal, like the scar I got from slicing my arm open,
Just to let a little bit of the pain you filled me with escape.
Then there were the June Bugs, flying through the house,
Their shells looking like a shinier version of the cosmos.
We all sat together, our families intermingled, when the thunder storms came.
Together in the center of the room like so many Bible studies I would waste my
Life going to. I am the god I see now, I am the divine deity.
The middle-room-circle was a theory on how to avoid electrocution from lightning,
Due to the metal pilings and frame of the trailer.
Maybe we should have spent more time in reverent prayer for your sake.
And then one day you came rushing in the room with black
Trash bags, telling us to stuff it, that we were kicked out.
You blamed us, telling us it was because we didn’t like the fish your
Sister made. What a thick burden for a star-eyed four year old to bare.
And then we took the bus, and you used me to prove a point as we
Hummed up America to South Dakota for one of the best things that ever
Filled my childhood of terror. Betty and Howard—grandma and grandpa.
There I learned to garden, and still now I garden but I abandon it at
Points where the memories are too shattering. And B. and H. are long
Gone, and I like to think if they knew what you did to me, they would
Have got on a plane and rescued me. I like to think there were
Some good people in my formative years. I like to think about the
Oreos they would give me before church, dying my teeth a milky
Grey. And the garden snakes that H. proclaimed harmless,
While my mother slithered through my life like a viper. And no one
Noticed. And they said nothing.
