Courtesy of anokarina/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).
Midnight once he stood me
by the door of our refrigerator
open, like a wedge of cheese in darkness,
a milk glass in my hand,
he yelled, he cursed at me
why would I do something for my mother
and not for him, why damn it not
just take the goddamned pill,
swallow the leather seed of it dissolving
slow against my uvula, the hard
edging off to chalk and choke.
What was in his mind, he knew so little
what went on in our apartment, maybe—
my children’s chewables,
a brown bottle also. In Pasadena,
I would pee asleep in bed
and dream our balcony was full
of quicksand as a van pulled up
with kidnappers from the news
channel, and when I fling the screen
door to return my heavy feet
take me nowhere.