nightgown
when i was five,
anxiety disorder laced in my genetics,
i couldn’t fall asleep until i whispered a prayer,
tears and snot dripping onto my pillowcase,
so god would protect me from the nightmares
that rose because my mother swore,
and i read too many books about how
everyone is at risk of spontaneous combustion,
but the praying kept my family
alive.
when i was six,
i stopped praying,
because i figured out that the only person pressed with their
ear to my door,
listening as i begged for my family’s lives,
was my grand-dad,
eager to comfort me in the shape of
twirling my hair and holding my hand,
nestled on his lap under the pressure
of his own bony limb,
and the theory that he would never hurt me.
right?
when i was seven,
i didn’t understand why he told me,
hands smitten with my aristocats nightgown’s rising hem,
that nobody would ever love me like he did,
and i also didn’t understand
why, if he loved me so much, were his hugs and caresses
our little secret,
like the tickling between my legs,
or the diet sodas mommy never let me drink,
out of fear that i could turn out
fucked up, from the inside
out.
when i was eight,
we moved away, clean-line suburb to dirty small town,
because mommy didn’t want us there anymore,
though daddy stayed, forwarding birthday cards
from the first man to tell me i was nothing without him.
mom refused to answer when i asked,
"why can’t we see grandpa?"
but the way that she looked when i asked
taught me something about him was wrong,
and to never ask again,
that his existence was something to
erase.
when i was a teenager,
i stopped believing in god,
because i realized that
god doesn’t let breathing fossils
pop their granddaughter’s cherry,
and that my brain had been so used to hiding information,
it stopped the progression of my memory center,
so i can’t remember where i was last tuesday,
but i also can’t recall exactly what happened
to my darling aristocat nightgown,
that i would clench over my knees
when i heard the door open,
and my prayers
stopped.