Crucify
remembering at 1:53 p.m. on 2003-08-31
His small sleeping head against a stained pillow case. A tangle of soft, brown hair and the feathery trace of lashes, fluttering in and out of the darkness. A silent, deep, and empty sleep.
Down the dimly lit hall, the shattering sound of wood splitting and the door floods open. The white light from the bathroom blinding, an unnatural heat seeping from the anger, from our pores. From the fear.
"Go check on her..." he says to me in a shaking whisper, and I nod obediently.
Stepping through the broken splinters, I peel back the shower curtain, and gaze down.
Her eyes are infuriated, strange and small. A venomous darkness, Waiting to reach up and push at me, and yet, at the same time, wanting to wrap her arms around me and be justified.
The moisture, a mix of sweat and water glistening on her naked body under the heat lamp, makes me stare, only allowing one small collection of words to escape my tongue.
"How many did you take...?"
Her disgust contorting her features, like a filthy animal, threatened in the dark of an alley.
"I DON'T know!"
At this moment ... her mind, words, life, tangled in the fear or flight. Her self indulgences, vomiting out of her for the sickness that it is. Her delusions and justifications, smiling at me through that menacing scowl, as if to say,
I dare you.
At this moment...all I really want to do is finish it for her.
Nothing more than holding her under that water and bleeding the demons from her. Extract the selfishness from her. Strangle her for everything she should be, and hating her for everything that she is.
Her brother, in the echoes behind me, his voice pleading, angry and haunting the back of my awareness.
"What about Charlie? What about him?"
She retaliates in a high pitched war cry,
"He has a father..."
The very first escape that comes to her mind. One more lack of effort that comes from her inadequacies. And Charlie is left again, with the last empty solution.
These solutions, the foundation of his three years on this earth.
I throw back the shower curtain in her face and walk out into the night sky.
My hands shake against the plastic green lawn chair. White knuckled and gripped, the tears explode from me violently.
If I could only push her one step closer to the darkness, maybe, he will be pushed one step closer to the light.
But in the end, it's always our hesitations, that live.
never was � never will be
