a.r.h.

for my birthday,
you and your four best friends
beat the living shit out of me
with water balloons, volleyballs, and a garden hose,
all in the good name of the construction
of my self-defense abilities.
a year later,
for my birthday,
you and your four best friends
threw me into a lake, fully clothed,
the previous year's mission apparently unaccomplished.
i don't quite remember
at what point
we became each other's record-holders,
and secret keepers,
but we always did listen
with tape recorders in our ears.
this was children's trust,
as we were quitting childhood
more quickly than we wanted,
something sacred,
found nowhere else in junior high.
there was one trust
you never extended to me
but i wasn't hurt
the night you called from outside
the interrogation room,
because no one deserves to remember that shit.
shame as sharp as it was helpless
you said you couldn't hate him
no matter what he had done to you,
he was still
your family,
you know, danielle, you said,
you really can't see through the one-way glass
it's just like the movies
but this one isn't worth its ticket stub,
it just hurts.
with courtrooms like war zones,
like finding justice
down the barrel of a gun
these were your secrets,
pedestaled like a lynching
for all to see,
a mother's instrusion:
you didn't dare trust written records
for years after that,
a brother's conviction:
a restraining order
twelve years too late.
you wanted to run from it
like you were the one betraying someone
like you were the one laying landmines,
i don't quite remember
if this was between the reign of
father number two, or father number three
but no one deserves
to be dragged back through that.
it was just a journal, you said.
it was just your way of forgetting.
so when it came time,
when i had grown enough history of my own
to jail up and forget
i knew to tie it with a bow.
they call this voice a gift,
but there are arrows
i aimed at my heart.
maybe this is why we both write so hard.
your brother
taught me how to be angry
for the people i love
and
your mother
taught me to never say things outright
so i can thank them
for my loyalty
and this stage, respectively,
but you,
despite all that had happened,
hadn't outgrown your innocence yet
and to me
it would be worth it
if i could take back all those lessons
i gained at your expense
because no one,
especially not you,
deserves to have to remember that.