Fear is a Familiar Battleground

Fear is a familiar battleground
I've been training in it since I was an infant
--I don't even remember
but my mother tells me
at first, I cried in my crib
watching my father leave
fist-sized black patches
on her chest
pulling myself to my feet
by the rails of my cage
though I couldn't yet walk
and then as the years passed
I learned
the more I cried, the longer
he pounded, spurred by the sounds from my throat
because he confused
passion with anger
power with anger
strength with anger
love with anger

I learned silence
served me better in the presence
of a predator
stalking his hunting grounds
vibrating with fury
I learned to breathe through the fear
and walk silently
on padded feet in the dark
I learned to swallow the panic
and I learned to
sleep in terror
to breathe in terror
to endure terror

Fear is a familiar battleground
and while I choose not to run
in the face of fear
while I force myself
to jump head first into battles
while I aspire to live a life of usefulness
I do not relish
prolonging the torture-

I am human, too

-and while fear is a familiar battleground
and while I choose to stay entrenched
(because the world is flooded with fear
and there are people
who don't know how to stand
in the flood)
I do not want it in my home.

Confession 4/16/19

Lie down, sweetheart,
he says to me
Sleep, my darling,
you need to rest

But the world is burning--
I hear the broken
sooty voices keening

the once perfectly delicate
naively beautiful things
now melted and shattered

I can smell the memory
of my own hair singeing
my fingers grasping
if someone would have just reach
through the flames
and pulled me through

I never questioned
the weight
I just saw the Nomex
in a pile on the ground
the shape of a tired man
sprawled
so I wriggled into it
and filled its empty sleeves
with body
clomped around in the boots
tilted my head back to
see my reflection from
under the rim of the helmet

and before I knew it
the wildfire
consume everything around me
it had stopped being make believe
and the brief moments of child's play time
with Fischer price walkies
had melted into
armor, molded to my flesh

I can't peel it off
even if I could
how could I?

In those suffering I see
my familiar agony
when no one came for me

My conscience tells me I must keep going
further back in time
to the beginning

reach back and stop
the insult
to keep that hollow look
in my eyes
from ever seeping
into theirs