Time has blurred the words
in fat-raindrops-on-dusty-
Tennessee-windshield style.

Their syllables have been stripped of definition,
but the volume still hangs heavy in my mind,
like post-thunderstorm static,
the low rumble of silence emphasized
and that cataclysmic cascade
of sound.

The crack of screaming,
the slurry of words that followed,
both echoed off our bare apartment walls.
Words hit like lumber, swung to kill,
smacked so hard, so heavy
my eyes couldn’t keep up
with my head.

My mother, a step-father’s fighting brimmed epic,
wandered with the ambling rage
of a hell bent tornado
from room to room,
leaving behind a swath of shattered domestication.

Broken plates, splinters
of a half price dinning room set
I still feel stabbed to bury
in the tenders of my feet.

It’s that check mark
notched in the drywall of my room,
pierced through years of layered latex armor
from when he flung my favorite Ford hot wheel
with hurricane force to prove a point.

That one blemish
on the spotless rented wall
rings clearer in my mind
than any of their hate-twisted words.