All those times wishing time would blaze with electricity fast turned into hope that it would just STOP… And it seemed to, when I slammed that door, it seemed to leave all my demons on the outside. Howling and scratching at the door like a lonely cat.
I sat and watched my father’s up-turned chin and eyes tracing the newspaper like I never did but it seemed important somehow then. Like if I just noticed and appreciated those little things that once confined me it would reverse my sins. My father tapped his foot and I tapped mine in unison, hoping to conjure a vortex to melt me back to my innocence.
My sister glided down the stairs. She had the glide and the glow of the pure but I no longer did. Just dirt, filling me up. Spilling from my mouth, my ears, my eyes. Filling up my breasts, my lungs, my vagina.
”Dirtyyyy…” Sister hissed.
How could she?! How could she know?!
”I’m not dirty!”
”I’m quite capable of seeing that. Don’t you think I’m capable of seeing that?”
”So just don’t call me dirty, because I’m not dirty.”
”I had no intent.”
”…Just don’t call me dirty ever again.”
”I’m sure I have no idea what your talking about.”
I stared helplessly into her calm gaze until suddenly I was very conscious of myself. My disheveled clothes, my dirt smeared face, my huge and panicked, guilty eyes. I looked down. I looked to my father and his chin still tilted and his toe still tapping, unaffected. I rested there for a moment and just soaked this up, for I would never witness this kind of subtle familiarity again.