Lessons From Childhood

Those sleepless nights

Recur as nightmares,

The ones I spent 

Hiding under the warm blanket

To escape from the shrieks

Of heated arguments.

The endless melodies

Of maternal tears

Never seemed so prominent

When they oozed

Into the painful lullabies

The made me sleep in terror.

Patriarchy resonated

In every crevice of my growth.

I could not but watch on

With my tiny fingers

Curling around Ma's thumb

To ease her agony.

Drunk in violence,

My dad retaliated to liberty.

A house but prison;

Alcohol and tobacco;

We died but slowly,

Daggers piercing through 

The throats that were choked.

The voices stifled;

Mirrors reflecting trauma.

The furnace of imprisonment,

Red hot in angst and wounds

Of domestic violence

To which my 12-year-old self

Fell prey to futile protests,

Landing as black and blue

Over my bleeding will

To carry on,

To fight for my mother.

The door locked from inside

Remains imprinted in my memory

As we held it against

A brute I called father,

As we held it against a jailer.

If I could,

I'd rewrite my past

With the blood from our scars.

If I could,

I'd drown his face

In the sea of our tears.

If I could,

I'd have taught myself

Those virtues aren't inherited.

That's what I learned

From my parents,

Yet they didn't teach me,

Because my teacher 

Resided inside,

And that taught me

That the offender was unjust.

And the world saturates you

With inevitable sufferings

Until you redeem yourself.

Lessons taught to me

As I learned to perceive

That the world must speak up.

Intolerance or brutality,

The fate shall be the same,

As here I float 8 years later

In the ocean of my tears,

Yet free.

Fingers curled around

That same thumb;

Doesn't fit the same anymore

But my parents taught me,

It's never about fitting in

But setting oneself free

And calling out injustice,

As here we embrace one another

While he resides alone in the jail

That he built for us.