Your fist was bigger than the world
Black and shadowed up on the wall
In the morning I searched the wallpaper for traces of it
Expecting to see streaks where it had danced so furiously
While you threatened to break my inadequate nose.
That was your best threat.
Years later, your fist had grown smaller, incapable of swallowing my head like I once imagined
But you still threatened the tender cartilege now and again
And when they pointed and laughed and called me
"False Jew False Jew"
I wondered if you had known it then too.
You were trying to save me all along
Save me from nightmares whose scents were trapped in your nose with the fumes from concentration camps
Save me from nightmares of being too blond, too smart, cleverer than you
But you never opened your eyes
Never saw how I saw you
And when you were lying on the stairs and your lips were blue
And I was pounding on your chest and the ambulance man was screaming into the receiver
It wasn't you I was saving
I was wishing it wasn't you
I was wishing part of you would die with the humility of being saved by the disgrace you claimed you'd raised
And yet somehow
With every year and every heart attack only your smiles died
And your fists continued to grow smaller, and sharper.
Sometimes it still hurts, and alphabetizing the keys on my keyboard, forcing myself to finally perfect my touch-typing hasn't helped just yet.
Sometimes it hurts with such virulence and I shut my eyes before the tears come and grit my teeth and swear that not yet, not yet, this isn't big enough yet, for me to put the walls back up.
Him and his assertations upon the cracks in my character, her and the shrillest note of her voice that threatens any reason, they're nothing. I know that they are nothing
and I will not cry this time, and it will not smother me this time, and every golden moment of this weekend, and the eight straight hours that I spent with my sister, spending muffler money on one-and-a-half-hour massages and sensory deprivation baths and dinner for her twentieth birthday...
...and then I drove her home and we've been screaming since and right now I'm too tired to worry about work and how to talk my way out of commitment to a man that I love sleeping with but can not explain my mind to.
And I miss my princess.
And I had so many other things to do this weekend, the dust bunnies are growing teeth, the dishes are carrying placards and threatening to throw themselves to their cacophonous deaths against a yellowed linoleum floor.
And I am still wondering why I am trying to believe that I can love them, or love anyone at all.