I used to measure the inches of space between the two of you.
When you hugged… when you laid together. I remember sacrifices made for his drinking, how you drove him everywhere when he had
nothing but his feet.
The walls remember the colors of our bruises.
How he painted the both of us.
They remember the hot fossilized
imprints on the side of your face.
Red dividing lines on your flesh
these walls remember wearing the splatters of you.
The door frame remembers your hands.
How you pulled yourself up when your legs could barely stand.
That house remembers how when I was a little boy, in time out,
I entertained myself by picking up your broken pieces and finding my mother on the floor.
How often my eyes turned ghost grey whenever I saw your soul had left you.
When a man hits a woman, there is no more respect.
No high pedestal; she is an ant stuck on the farm with the rest,
Tunneling through what she dug for herself.
Only to realize any light is him burning her under the glass.
He will shelve her in dust with the rest of his failures.
He will then look away, convincing himself that this is not a crime.
That she shouldn’t have pushed him this far.
When a man hits a woman, she will finally realize, at the last minute, all the signs she ignored.
Walls will remind her to count the hours spent waiting for him to call her back.
When a man hits a woman, the child will be confused.
Question his surroundings.
Look up at the walls, count holes punched in and match the broken jigsaw pieces of bruises on his mother… on himself.
Conclude that in life people are meant to be nothing more than punching bags.
He will wonder if it is okay to abuse women too.
He will try to grow into the doorframe like the one that supported his mother each time she collapsed.
He will rampage… whosoever dares touch his mother.
React in a way only a mama’s boy would. Grow to respect women.
Knock down walls he used to grow up in. Tear down ideas that he would ever be like his father until his knuckles are charred and bloody.
Until he writes every… single… wrong.
