Escape

As a child, I found life too difficult to bear.

There was no peace to be found anywhere.

My mom was caught in a battle she couldn’t win.

I watched my father beat her as a cock pecking a hen.

And there was nothing I could do about the situation

Except to remove my participation

As a witness to the brutality

And check reality.

How could I be

Thrust into the arms of domestic violence?

So my defense was to lose all cognizance

In a place of pretense.

And I sought safety within a bubble,

As if I could extract myself from the trouble

In my home. 

There I found myself so alone.

Yet I was still there and I could still see and hear

And I could still be consumed with fear

And helplessness.

“God bless this mess”,

Should have been the sign above the door.

It was my mother’s screams that tore

Into my psyche,

Making me crazy,

Crazy enough to jump over the deep end

To a place where I could see out and they could see in:

Into my bubble,

Where I could escape the rubble

Of a broken family and be disengaged

From the rage.

Our two worlds could never intersect.

And I was where they could never interject

Their poisoned thoughts and feelings.

Their fighting already had me reeling

And teetering between sanity and insanity.

I had to find a place to protect me.

This bubble would keep me from the viruses,

Because malice is

A disease,

Which comes with guarantees

Of no cure.

So for sure,

There’d be more immunity the further I withdrew.

Yet, over my heart’s wounds grew

Calluses.

I became imprisoned behind walled palaces

With a condition of heart cirrhosis.

My heart was as the rock before Moses.

Then I realized that this is not what living is.

And it would be better to participate in life and accept what living gives.

So I burst my bubble and entered into the world naked and exposed,

Vulnerable and transposed.

Ready to laugh, to love, to cry,

To hurt, to share, to die,

To fulfill my purpose and my destiny,

By being the ultimate and fullest expression of me.