He looks at me with disdain- blood dripping from his knuckles like wine. We can never tell if it’s his or mine. When he speaks, I hear the words of affirmation clinging to me like a lost child.
“There’s nothing left in you to love,” he whispers, words crashing like freight trains. The pain is real as he kisses my cheek. It’s not the way normal way kids get kissed- it’s all fist and no lips. “There wasn’t anything to love to begin with.”
My hands will shake against the wooden floor boards, begging to find something to hold. I know he’s right, I know how worthless I am. He repeats the words like a mantra as he strikes me again, whiskey burning my nostrils and dancing under my skin. I won’t beg him to stop, won’t argue because I know it’s what I deserve. I hear the fabric of my shirt rip, the way his fingers lace in my hair to replace his grip.
“Look at me,” he demands, fingers burning against my jaw as he forces our eyes to clash. The room feels suffocating- goosebumps rising like shields. Love was never a word I found swimming in his eyes, not when he looked at me. Laughter bubbles in my throat, the hysteria setting in as his palm writes a five line poem on my cheek. There’s nothing beautiful about this, just harsh words and blatant truth.
Hands wrap around my throat, stealing away the laughter and my breath. The last picture of mom falls as my back collides with the wall- glass shattering like her own neck. I know what he did and know that he’d do it all again; I just wonder when. An impending doom and a fate that’s sealed as my vision spots.
“She clawed at my hands,” he starts, my own gripping my shirt. I don’t fight back because I know I deserve this. What am I holding on for? What do I have to fight back for? Nothing. “You’re so pathetic you can’t even do that. You know how worthless you are, don’t you?”
My lips begin to tingle, heat building under my eyelids as I’m denied the life he gave me. Our eyes lock for a moment, his fingers tighten like a vice until I can’t even gasp. I can feel the blood leaking from my nose, the pressure building in my head.
I’m on my knees gasping for air, arms too weak to hold myself up, wood biting into my cheek. There’s a pain in my ribs as he pushes me over, malice in his grin as he watches me struggle. He leaves without a word, doesn’t spare a glance as I lay in the dark when he shuts the light off. There’s glass digging into my feet, licking my calves and calling me home. Moonlight trickles in from stained glass, painting me in hues I only wish I could be. Purple was never a color for me- one reserved for royalty. Red dances in my vision, hands covering oceans until I know only darkness once again. Pathetic is all I’ll ever be, right dad?
The anxiety sets in, my mind repeating all the homework I have to do. A coping mechanism, if you will. Distracting until there’s nothing but elements filling my brain. The floor wobbles beneath me, blood rushing like rivers.
“Figure out the titration quantity,” I whisper, fingers dragging along the walls until my feet are climbing stairs. Autopilot has taken over, mind elsewhere as I open my door without really being there. “Write the procedure. Figure out the quantity.”
I sound like a broken record, repeating the words like they’re the only ones I know. The notebook stays blank, begging to have everything spilled like mercury. This rage begins to build as I can’t seem to focus, can’t bring my hands to write the equations.
Then, it comes out like fire, eating the page with such rage. I’ll write about how pathetic I am, how I deserve everything that he’s done until the letters spell, ‘worthless’.
