“nothing good happens after midnight”
She feels like she needs to protect herself now
Dad was never around
And mom?
Well mom was there
But so
was everyone else
The smell of cigarette smoke
And Old
Milwaukee cans knocked over
And that sweet, biting odor of pot that snaked its way around
to her room
That’s how it all started out
Until she got a little older
Then her breasts were pushing on her shirt
And it
seemed like everyone turned to notice
Her thighs grew and her butt stuck out
More than
before
Now, after some time, it was a chemical smell
That made
you choke
And the rap, rap, rap of the razors edge
On a
class picture frame
And the sweet, biting odor of pot was gone now
And there weren’t as many others there either
The ones who stayed were more “selective”
And they
had “selective” tastes
Special needs
And she could hear mom whispering outside of her door
Hissing instructions
Criteria
She would turn over to face the wall
The neon turquoise numbers on her clock
Almost always
read, two forty one am
Nothing good happens after midnight,
She’d
tell herself
As the gentle squeak would come of the door handle opening
slowly
The light from the “family” room would spill into the hall
She could see them silhouetted
Like hungry monsters
But these
fuckers didn’t live under the bed in obscurity
No, they walked right through the God-damned door
Sometimes through
tear filled eyes,
She would
look over at her mother in the doorway
Arms folded, eyes closed
Tapping her foot in anticipation of the rap, rap, rap
On the glass picture frame
And the chemical smell that would make her choke
The transaction complete – soaked in sweat and crawling with
the ugly
She would
turn to one side and vomit into her trashcan
She tried to run away a few times – but she had nowhere to
go
She tried to ask for help – but the courage failed her every
time,
At the
last second
She tried to scrub it off in the shower
She rubbed the skin raw
She tried to cut it out of her skin
But they
found her before she could drain it all away
So with no hope left at all – she took a hammer from school
one day
When the door opened that night,
Her eyes
were already opened
It took the cleaning crew three days in her room
They were on a tight deadline, so they had to work very late
On the
third day
But they made sure to get it all done before eleven fifty
nine pm
Everyone knows that nothing good happens after midnight
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