Rabbit and Rose
You had been drinking
cheap wine all week
and blacked out by Thursday.
He still hadn't come home
by Sunday. In the Name
of The Father, the Son
and the Holy Ghost.
I was adorned in newly
purchased unwashed, black
Sears Tough-skins, sweating
as usual. They chafed my soft
white inner thighs. My feet
were sore. The oversized dress shoes
felt like a clown's, stuffed
with toilet paper in the toes.
I settled for a used belt too,
fading brown, unmatched,
pulled as tight as it could go,
flopped to one side, looking
like an elephant's trunk.
And Phillip's unwashed,
overly starched white shirt.
The brother who always
Raised his fists to me and
on my holiest of days,
sullen and defeated,
as David to Goliath,
You dress me in his hand-me-downs.
But not because we're poor,
but I was born second,
not first or third or
the patient middle child.
Your voice echoing, "oh honey,
you have to understand"
Yes, I know again, an afterthought.
So, without a proper
haircut, my bushy blonde
mane wafts over my left
eye. And at the last second
You hand me a mini-bible,
like a prop, so later You can
convince all the Italian relatives
You're a Good Mother and
a converted Catholic,
and He's not an absent Father.
And as the f-stop grabs the
first seven years of my life,
my lips are flattened,
my eye distant and
Jesus Christ's love,
won't be reserved for me.
Because what I have learned,
is so far from the life
You've shown me.