Unfurnished homes stack up like gnomes in the front yard of my brain. Empty and cluttered these spaces remain. The winter air felt like a crowded theater. The laughter haunted me as sweat beads washed over my face and I stuttered trying to remember the pity lines I was “gifted”. A malice man was put onto my doorstep. I knew it was doomed from the beginning, no smiles appeared on my face. I dismissed him how he dismissed me two years before. Two kids looking back at each other. I was a girl, he was a boy confined to the body of a man. At the time I could not understand but now I do, Why wouldn't a boy hate a world he is not ready for. As a girl I was not prepared to have what was left of my free will, my bubble of lies stripped from me as naked as a new born child. I was transformed into a watchdog paranoid everywhere I went.

 My ears ring with what I heard that year. The guilt I have not been freed of since that year. All the nights I spent listening to what occurred in the room above me. I would wait for this man to check on me, at first I would act fast and pretend to be asleep. The hate expanded taking over my mind and soon I watched my door waiting to look him in the eye. Plotting to give him a glimpse of the shame I wanted to damage him with. 

       One night my mom came down to me crying. I had never seen her this way, fragile, cracking. Weak. Night after night she came down. A pattern I had grown accustomed to. Saving a space in my twin bed for my mother became normal. I was taken into Coraline's world. The mother I once knew was gone and my “new” mother took over. I could see the prophecy, I trusted her to have it and she rejected me. I wanted to be her angel and cover her from the darkness with my wings. She stayed. My white wings covered with black splatters could not hold up anymore. The plan he created fell in front of me fully formed. He wanted me to know what he was doing. A rotten body, and it was mine to bury. In the air we floated preparing for this silent battle. My mom was soft clay in the palm of his hands, shifting into whoever he was that day. The white flag waving for one of us to grab. The young girl I was yearned for this fight to the death. I still do. I am still floating in the air no matter how calm I seem. 

        My father and mother are people. They make mistakes. From the time I came out of the womb, I was itching for the life I wanted. I will not continue to let the mistakes my parents made continue to derail me from what I want and need. This was not a story to spew the forgiveness I will one day give, or the regret I feel. I am married to the person I have become. For better or for worse, in sickness and in health. I will not forget the way I felt those bad days and how I let the good ones fog my judgment. I am prepared for battle, soon we will meet on the field. I will cut his heart out how he did mine. I am prepared to leave.