Choice

His chilled fingers press ardent roots of recall into my past memories.

Azure eyes gaze back into mine. Mirroring a twisted smile with a crying whimper.

Lucca, my stepfather, was scary when I took and used his time, even if it was his idea. A slapping sting turns my face from translucent and sickly to a flaming red.

The Ghana vase’s reflection is ceramic ice and reveals the truth of my abuse. Bruises across my collarbone, back, and arms, scratches and gashes from a starved dog he kept at the back of the house, cigarette burns between my shoulder blades and on the inside of my thighs, my bones protrude at odd angles from fractures and lack of nutrition.

I can’t eat, this is my choice, it would still be my choice even if my jaw hadn’t taken the beating for me the night before and the week before that. But, that’s not what I call it, neither reward nor punishment.

The vase shows the teeth of keys, lots of keys locking windows, doors, and chains. I used to hear sounds of a car, and the garble of employees discussing the office. I heard them, but they failed to lift t heir eyes to my screams or my crying when I was little.

They were always too absorbed in their own lives of money, relationships, and work to help a neighbor or save a child.

I wanted to fight back but parting is sorrowful and useless, I don’t want to fight what I can’t avoid.

I won’t know how much trouble I am in until he starts weeping blood, weeping it cold and frozen down his cheeks, the day he regrets how he took my childhood away, but never being able to stop

Even now…