"I'll be right down"

I hate my mom, and I hate my father, and I'd probably hate God if he screamed my name whenever he wanted my attention, even though sometimes I find myself wishing he would.

They're done packing, done eating, done doing whatever you do before you leave your daughter home all alone for a week. I'm just happy that they won't be around to see the pouring, then the bitter gulp, the plea for acceptance of one hundred nowhere boys and girls. They will probably find out, and I will not have any shame when I point them to the scene, because it always begins where it ends when you trust. In a few moments, the parents will leave ignored, and I will let the memory of them dissolve like white sugar in a black heart.

It's always this empty, always this cold, always depleting life, a cyclone down into the open hole. But even now this coldness is bone reaching, its numbness presses tacks into the outer parts of the fingers. Perhaps some open window for the earlier, but now deserting sun. No, there's a sound now, very clear, very close, a man.

With an instinct I turn, and in an Instant I wish I hadn't, because he's right there. There is a field of blackness sprawling across his face, and mountains ascending into the cool dark clouds  of his broken eyes. The wave grey shadows of the exposed dagger flow over the carpet in a deep waltz, twirling, rising, falling. A silenced step casts more new light into the dance, my metronome heart clicking faster on every sway. Arm no longer at his side it reaches out in a frantic burst, as it gains altitude the muscles tighten, closing firmly around a glistening handle. PUSH. A gasp, a tickle, and a trickle of youth escapes through the fresh crack in the facade, all attempts to hide the sweltering  inside collapsing. The pendulum on its receding swing, another step is made forward. The tacks pressing further than fingers, and into every vein, and then the tacks become teeth, clasping, biting harder with every breath. PUSH. The pointed pendulum returns turning the teeth into claws, ripping through loosely sewn threads. First a fall onto my knees, then a crumpling dive to a youth stained sea of carpet. Left for dead.

The numbness has just begun to win its battle, and the man has left with an assortment of new toys, soon to question their worth. As for me, the questions have already begun, and regret is replacing the heavy pounding of my heart. A blur of life's greatest moments reeling its way across the wet film in front of my eyes. I was a child once, with cuts and scratches from playing too far from home, out of sight, a frenzied scramble to be free. And mother was always there, she had one band aid for each wound, and a kiss for each tear. And in time the knees would bare scabs, and they might stay on long enough to heal, but she was always offering care. Will I ever get to feel those sweet butterflies as the pain subsides, or the brush of her lashes to renew the skins power to heal. Will I die here on the carpet, broken, as empty of life as when they left? It's not the slipping temperature that drove me to the warmth of my bed, but it might be a nice ending. So both hands grip around a clump of threads, tighten and PULL. The dragging takes me only inches closer to the stairs, which lead eternally skyward, into a glaze of white clouds, and a warm embracing sun. 

PULL. Trying to use my trembling knees required far too much energy, and so instead hand over hand, a slow march towards the mountainous steps continued. The hands begin to need more and more power to make them close, to hold on. And even though my memory has become faded, the body still remembers playing out this same scene seventeen years ago, dragging its brand new limbs from place to place. And I wish that like then, this time could be towards my mother, even my father, but now all I hear as I drag myself upwards, is God calling out my name.