Trigger Warning/Content Warning: This is a partially autobiographical narrative that features a scene/memory of abuse, domestic violence, drug-use, etc…
I lost my shadow in the darkness;
it was nowhere I could see
“Sir?” A stiff-looking, bespectacled administrative-type peered, slightly cross-eyed, from behind the rich mahogany desk at the other end of the overtly sterilized-seeming room. Hopeful light beams from the windows hosted a frenzied exhibition of dust motes waltzing on merrily as though the rest of his life was not decided according to the whim of their expertise, this committee of an overwhelming and incomplete mismatched alphabet of academic and certified credentials. In a way, it was quite odd to him that those windows had no bars to guard against escape while he fantasized about just such a gamble.
He thought back, simultaneously to only moments ago and nearly a decade back, remembering both events vividly:
“How would you characterize the experiences with our institution that have brought you to where you are now?” Their stern expectant expressions, critically awaiting a sufficient response, one laudably conciliatory while maturely grounded in the sobering reality of the situation.
The whitewashed wooden screen door complained to a sharp close behind him as he made his way across the cool lawn in the humid late-twilight. Goosebumps prickled across the nakedness of his torso as the mid-thirty-degree air clutched him like a wispy and threadbare linen scarf.
The fighting and yelling had escalated to a point where he was unsure of what might happen next but rather than provoke any unnecessary violence prematurely, he surreptitiously hid an aluminum bat out-of-view, behind a tree, before initiating the confrontation, just in case there were no other choice.
My shadow lost me in the dark
and became one with me
A familiarly contorted visage harkened back the waking nightmares of childhood in which this man’s ire seemed a demonic possession, a monster inside bubbling to the surface, taking command of the otherwise nurturing and principled fellow. Overturned furniture and the feeling of shivering in the protective arms of an equally terrified woman took up residence in his gut like a stone. He shook away the grip of that trauma and firmed his steps, as he grasped the nerve to speak.
“DAD! You can’t act like this! Leave her alone and get back inside!” The teenager pleaded desperately. His bare feet collecting loose sand and random moss or grass or twigs depending on where he stepped.
“If you keep walking, you won’t walk back! You’ll have to be carried back in a BOX!” He screamed at the matronly woman whose feet had just found the asphalt.
Then at breaking of the dawn,
I awoke with a stretch and yawn
“He’s drunk and high and who knows what else! I can’t DEAL with this ANYMORE!” She shrieked from the pavement, hair wild and tear-streaked face. It was true that his half-lidded, thousand-yard stare had become a tell-tale signature of these encounters.
“Just STOP this. Both of you get inside. It’s too cold; this is ridiculous! The kids have school in the morning; I have school AND work tomorrow!”
It all sounded so preposterous. Coming out of his mouth. From progeny to parent. A not-quite-man straining to be the voice of reason, the paragon of tranquility, an ambassador of peace, for two alleged adults. A “small-town, high-achiever”–top of his class and being fast-tracked to fulfill the “Most Likely to Succeed awards” he had received each and every year of grade school–dealing, at home, with Nietzschean beasts.
Eyes shut hard against the light;
heart deadened with pitch of night
“If you want me to stop, you tell her to get back in that house and get on her knees!“
They glared at each other. Only a few paces from one another now. All of the tension between them thick like sandy molasses, slowing everything down. Each palpable second tick-tocking along in his mind while they each sized up the other, a perilous dance in the mind which translated to stony stillness of the body.
The boy refused to give in even to speaking the wrong words. Placidity punctuated time itself. Suddenly, the inebriated patriarch made a clumsy lurch forward with malice in his eyes. The boy startled, taking several cautious steps backward to fluidly kneel, grab the handle of the bat and rise again, brandishing the modern club.
A curious knowing expression washed across the aged face and as a smirk grew upon his lips, the father stated flatly, “If you’re going to use that… You better hope you kill me…”
The desperate teen went as cold inside as his skin had become in the night air, an effigy of emptiness, yet still breathing while blood flowed through his veins as his heart pounded on, despite the futility in the moment, this schism of reality and nightmare…
“… Because if you don’t… I’ll kill you. And then, I’ll kill her. I’ll walk inside and I’ll kill every person in that house,” he had gestured callously to the only home they had known for fifteen years, “And when the cops show up, I’ll kill them, one-by-one until they kill me, because I guarantee you… I’m not going to prison.”
Cast on the ground was all my hope,
all the light that had been inside
His mouth had been moving. He had been speaking to them–back in the room with the professionals. Answering their question in the way that seemed to portray his truth while preserving their worldview. This collection of neckties and pantsuits, with gold cuff-links and tasteful diamond earrings, here to pass their judgment on the worthiness of his chance at a future. The choice he made all those years ago. To take a man’s life or not. A fight to the death with so many lives at stake. There were many similarities in this moment. Where am I really? he thought to himself, Is this a parole hearing, a mental health status update, or a graduate thesis defense? The more he asked himself, the more he thought about it, the less he was sure that it truly mattered.
My shadow beyond my careful eye betrayed my innermost thoughts
My long lost loves and all my dreams lay scattered and left to rot
