Don’t sit here and look at me and smile.

We both know it’s just a cover up as a means of survival.

Do you even notice?

Do you even care? Do you realize that when

dad comes home

drowning in a bottle of whiskey you didn’t know we owned

I was never there.

And I apologize…

because the safety you find in me I never recognized.

So I disappear from my life;

hoping that dark nights and

street lights will

mask the pain I know I’ll see when I go back inside.

And I know that when I come back home,

greeted by lavender and citrus dish soap foam,

you will be standing over a cutting board.

A chiseled chin above circles of green peppers.

My favorite.

But it doesn’t distract me from your purple eye

that you hide behind a

perfect smokey eye.

I sit at a bar chair and watch your sullen eyes cut into another pepper.

You look up and catch me staring.

You put a handful of rings in a bowl,

pushing it towards me hoping it would fill the hole

inside me.

As tears fall from my eyes, I am completely aware that we won’t be safe tonight.

And you lift my chine up

And wipe my tears

And kiss my forehead

And fail to calm my fears

And you smile.