A
latch key kid I'd head straight for the blinking machine: red:
push
play : I'm going to kidnap Sarah became not unusual.
When
my parents got home, my adopted dad would prepare
the
gun, teachers were phoned with the secret word--
strawberry,
for anyone picking me up from school.
(I
can tell you that now.)
At
night I'd lock the front door eleven
times-- up
and out of bed: that journey of heart pound
down stairs again and again: terror plagued
those
years, years after we'd left him, changed my name,
never sit with my back to a window.
never sit with my back to a window.
Sometimes
he'd call when we'd be home.
Mom made me talk to him, though
I didn't really
want to, though he terrified me, though I hated him.
He'd
say, Tell your mom I love her still. Tell her I love her.
Mom
would listen as she stirred a hot pot, I'd wrap phone cord
tighter around my finger till the tip turned white.
Your father loves you, she'd say.
There
is no data on how many children were saved by milk cartons,
but
as a child the fear welled my face would one day
be
on one. I hate/d milk; those faces haunted me. The rows
after
rows of children stapled
on
Walmart walls still get me.
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