I dreaded the slow walk to the car as the monster grins at me.
Her slow smile paralyzes me as she waves her claws.
While murmuring “Hello” she really means
“Get in the car before I think about running you over with it.”

How many more seconds untill I get the repeat of this moment?

--

Into the church that we have never attended we head.
"Water, Water, Water!" the monster calls, the bucket is slung, and i am drenched.
No burning, no singing, but yet the Holiness has still not reached me.
A scream rips from her throat in anger, as she was wrong;
my shivering and dripping frame smiles out of spite from making her witness her own faults.

Is this what they call salvation?

--

Coming home was worse; When i say the monsters fight me, i really mean it
The words are just the first parts, as they adorn me with a thorny crown of
"We hate you, you are not our daughter anymore."

Do they not realize the comfort I feel in those words?

--

But then the real blows arrive, and the speech of my brother.
The brother that I don’t talk about
and who I also try to shove from the splitting corners of my mind;
the mind that feels more like a boxing ring than a safe-haven.

This is not a home, this place in which I live, for that is something filled with love.
I know better than to mistake this place for something pleasant. And you would too.

--

I can't go outside now, yesterday's fight was too bad.
Couldn't hide it all with makeup or sleeves, no matter how hard I tried
This is written on my face, but god-forbid the floor has a scar or two.

--
And in such a fashion the Best Parents of the Year Award gets given away,
yet another hollow statue I have to polish upon endless shelves year after year,
until the he-monster needs something new to throw at me to get the point across.

And there on the floor I must apologize for bleeding upon ivory tiles, and I must clean up my crimson mess.
Clumsy me.

--
So I sat in the house, counting how many times the laundry span
by the clanging sounds of the zippers hitting the white clean-machine.
I smile as the silence sinks in, sound is seemingly dead
But dismay strikes harder at me, for the sound was my only friend here.
and now it is gone, gone and dead. Yet another thing I have killed.

Maybe this is what they call dementia.