One day I found
Poetry needed no rhymes
So unlike,
when the piano clunked,
when my sobs sogged keys,
when my fingers clumsily blundered,
The keys I was taught to play
Displeasing Mother’s ears

I wrote, I wrote
Pen scrawling preteen feelings
across the tear laced pages
The razor-tip spewing ink
Releasing rage,
thick as blood clotting at wound
painfully spearing,
the emotion she left me with

Poetry found me
Alone.
Withdrawn to shell
Defenses on,
yet so defenseless
So vulnerable to her fresh attacks.

It listened
when my friends turned,
when my sister tattled,
when my dad hushed,
A beacon of silence
when the nights filled with screams,
when my arms screeched from pinching,
when my eyes moaned from draining,
when my throat learned to close,
To retreat,
nod in compliance.
Instead I listened
Taking in her arrows,
baring her viperous claws
her tongue’s knotty whip.
I said nothing.
Barely blinking.
Devoid of emotion
I shuffled off to bed .

Waited for the moon to light
So I could bleed
across the cotton cloth pages
of my notebook
In the story
I knew would
Displease Mother’s ears