Thin as Sticks

You hurt my innocence. Your big voice bearing down.

I was as thin as sticks. I was scaffolding quavering under your blows.

When I dreamt of faces in the walls and scared myself,

you were in the grain of the wood,

in the cracks of the house you owned. In the things I broke.

You yelling at me — do you care for them more than me?

If I can’t go, how can you be this to me? Not yet broken

Free?

I didn’t fight back. How much weaker you are now than me.

You can barely stand to hold your racket. “Let’s hit twenty,” you say. “No, ten.”

You want to feel like a man. Well what was I? And what was I to you?

Something to control? For what?

Little, skinny as sticks. I stuck with you because I had to.

Because my pockets are on backward — I can’t hold your grown-up secrets?

Does my smallness threaten you?

Does it entice your control? Life shouldn’t be this way.

You were my “big daddy” — I could change you with my will, with my mind.

In the mirror, I knew that everyone was a game set up for me to play.

Like the books you bought for me, and said “type this in,” I stick with you, just don’t expect me to hold your hand when you die.