I hid from Alice
along the window sill
Squeezing between the refrigerator and the screen
As she washed dishes and started out the dirty glass above
the sink
Seeing none of the neighbor’s house so much as
Daydreaming about dates, boys and marriage
All that horse and carriage crap
People believe in back then,
She calling my name when she “woke up.”
Panicked about losing track of me
After she’d promised her mad sister, my mother,
She would watch over me while mother was gone,
Me, giggling about my cleverness
As the screen’s rusted hooks broke loose
Sending my seven year old body plunging
Out into empty air the back porch neglected to fill
Falling down through the slanted cellar door
And into the teeth of the cellar’s stone stairs
I felt no pain until I saw the blood
Fingers touching the remote spot on the back of my head,
My aunt’s screaming leading to ambulance sirens
And the grim-faced men in white who sewed me
The way mother used to sew fabric,
My wails at each painless stitch filling the whole hospital
Grieving my aunt all the more when I called for mother
Instead of her.
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