Time so Ignorant
Lil’ miss independent
She’s ready for school
and skips to a tune as she
walks that florescent day mile.
She is late, or early,
or maybe right on time.
Hopscotch on the playground,
a spelling quiz, double-dutch
and arithmetic.
School bells ring and
she skips to a tune as she
walks that mile back home.
Keys in hand, she opens the door.
Her toddler sister welcomes her
arms spread like an eagle, toddler
soars. They embrace and toddler
smiles knowing she’ll be an older
sister soon too.
A moment of firsts she wishes
to share Lil’ miss speaks,
“Mommy I’m home”
But the bangles do not jingle.
She tries again. This time she is
louder, this time happier as she travels
to where she knows her mother will be.
But this time,
She does not see her mother
sitting on the bed.
She sees her mother
lying on the floor.
Contents from the night stand
on the rug, a phone off its hook
no longer buzzing, pages from a book
paper scattered, a lamp on its side
bulb shattered.
A reddish blue knot shines
on mother’s forehead.
She drops toddler, or
sets her down. Attempts
shakes to wake but mother
is stubborn, mother is still,
mother is suspended.
Lil’ miss hangs up phone
and picks it up again, she dials
the last of single digits once
the first of single digits twice
Strangers invade the house
and take mother away.
Toddler is somewhere,
Lil’ miss nowhere.
In the distance a phone is ringing.
Someone calls “come down stairs”
With a blink, she is standing in a kitchen,
or a hallway, or a living room.
A man’s voice tells her.
She screams—
It pierces through her hollow body.
Great force splits the scream, like
daggers it slashes everything it touches.
Time so ignorant, continues
10, 15, 20 Lil’ miss is grown but
she has been since
that spring day in May, a day
one week after Mother’s Day,
four days after her 11th birthday,
and one day after her father’s birthday.
That fatal fucked up day, Lil’ miss was motherless.
~S.M. Parrish~
