Cigarettes Count The Hours

Thirteen. The things I've seen. The people I've been. The things I've seen you wouldn't even want to know. And you know? I don't think I want to know either. Not anymore. Sick of all this shit, sick of time and again being told who to be and how to hold myself. Struggling against time, struggling to tow a line I've been handed, but just can't hold. Mom at the kitchen table. Smoke hovers above the ashtray where six cigarettes count the hours from breakfast, where time goes up in smoke. Where has the time gone? Where did the time go? Walk by the stained doorframe, blood splatter remains from yesterday's godawful night. Fire, fear. Mom's been drinking again, and dad just gets in. Which is weird, of course, cos he's not been around in four years. Dad gets in, just in time for the fireworks. Causes the fireworks. Where have you been and what have you been doing and why the hell did you leave me with this mess? Barefoot and pregnant you left me, and now you're back, and now you want back in. But I've moved on, you see, I've moved on with no one to take care of me and we're doing fine. We're doing just fine without. That's all he needed. That's just what he wanted. Picks up a knife, still covered in blood from dinner, and he waves it, chicken juices splattering on the doorframe. You'll take me back, he says. I've made my fortune. I went away, but I still love you, I always did. I just had to go. I just had to leave and make some money to make this marriage work. Ran off with your secretary, mom says, and starts to seethe. Fire and rage, anger out of its locked cage to say all that had to be said. Love of a knife? What kind of love is that? What kind of love waves a knife at a wife and her children. What kind of love is that. And he's been doing coke. And he's freaking and waving the knife, and I'm scared for my life, and my mom, what has she seen, what has she been to be here, now, with this? I jump in, tell him to go away, that wherever he goes, he'd best stay, so long as it's not here, not with me. But he won't take it, and he won't let go the knife, waving it ever closer, ever closer to my neck. I'm your only daughter, the firstborn, your child. But demons in his eyes he won't ever recognise the pain he's made me feel, the hate that's conquered any hope I'd had to see our relationship heal. So I run and I call and the cops they come. The cops they come to take him away. Take him away from here, as far as far can be. As far as will be safe for me. But the demons are stronger, and they rage, and they've taken my dad away from me. Taken him away in handcuffs, away, away, away. And I don't know what to do, and I have no-one to talk to. My dad's locked away, but it's always been that way, it's always been that way, and I don't know how I'll ever tell him the things he needs to hear, the way I fear for him, for his life, and how much I hate the way he hates his wife. Technorati Tags: Abuse, Creative