Fractured

By Andrew R. Duckworth

I. The Thumb Prints

I was a chattering child at two,
Walking up to strangers,
To hell with any dangers,
And then I went mute.
I try to see the good,
But then I think of the monstrous
Hands that molded me at two
From the fresh clay of the ground
To the coarse, hollowed out boy
Unwilling to speak to anyone.
And how I’ve tried to forget,
But such a thumb print on the mind
Can’t be erased.
She impressed those thumb prints
When she clasped my shoulders
In her clutched claws
And lifted me up to the lowest
Tree branches,
Me looking down to gritted teeth,
Gnashing like a demon’s,
Eyes pouring fire,
An eternal furnace,
Showing the full extent of Hell
And all of its horrors.
I wasn’t concerned
With counting the souls,
But with saving mine
As I dropped onto the hard ground,
All space, time, and sound
Stopping as I fell.
But those hands were not done
Moulding me from happy to barren
As the savage beast grasped me
And beat me,
And beat me,
And beat me like a mallet
Trying to break through
A canvas drumhead.
And as I lay there
Near a picnic table,
Dripping raindrops on the dry ground,
That monster was asked by another
Why I was crying.
“Sometimes, spoiled brats cry,
He’ll get over it.”
It was the day that I learned
That Hell exists,
As I had walked through it
And still have the scars.

II. Broken Silence

At thirteen, a seal was broken,
The revelation my mother
Had waited eleven years to hear
As, in a nighttime conversation,
I spewed the past from my mouth
Like vomit from a bitter stomach.
As shocked as she was,
She knew something had happened.
It was why her eagle wings of freedom
Flew me from that Hell
To a Purgatory.
She knew when I turned
From a chattering child
To a quiet shell,
Empty of the joy a child should have.
And as angry as she was
At herself for not knowing
Exactly what happened,
I was more angry
I hadn’t spoken sooner.

III. Shattered Glass

I have long asked
What might be different.
Would that chattering child
Have become a confident man?
Would I have become another monster,
One whose confidence is overshadowed
Only by his ego?
Sometimes I think of the positives,
But on days like today,
I question why.
Why me? That old selfish sentiment.
Why was I the one in the clutches
Of a demon’s grip?
Perhaps I saved another child
From these sorts of questions,
From this agony,
From becoming fractured,
A million shards of shattered glass.