Melt Us Down

You claim to know fear, know fights, know tears,
but do you know the kind of fear you feel at 13
sitting in a chair carved from steel
in a dark closet of an office that only grows darker
as you watch yourself from across the room
tell the therapist,
in front of your parents and sister,
that she has said she wished she were dead
at only ten years old because
she does not understand
the dark figured snarling beast that lives
inside her small body, worse yet
that she cannot find help to silence him?

Have you lived through the fights
over nothing that drop
into the house like an
atom bomb: unexpected and unwarranted?
The fights that end
in hyperventilation that comes to a halt
only when the cold water
rains forms the shower head
to soothe her heat prickled skin.

Do you know the tears
of a grieving mother as she holds tight
to the body of her child as she screams
"I hate you, let me die already."
Or the tears of a father
slumped in the seat of his truck,
because he cannot be in the house
for it only upsets her?
He’s lost because he misses
so much working the night shift.

Each fight you fear
these tears will be the last
while blame seeps in, its icy tendrils
clenching your heart. Then burning
white hot they slip around your throat,
squeezing tighter until you are sure
your head will pop like that of a dandelion head
in the backyard last summer.

A feeling that lasts until
you see a smile break her face,
hear a giggle escape her sad lips.
Still you wonder, worry,
that this is the last fight.
The last good day she'll have.
The last smile you'll see.