Underneath the Ice
I walked in the park today
along the thin stretch
of dried green grass
that runs along the ocean
where we used to walk
on Sunday mornings
after making love slowly.
I took the park back
to be my own
to make a new memory
so it could be mine,
not ours.
I looked out over
the silver water
which sat so still like ice
under the heavy
gray, winter gloom.
I took out my pencil
from my heart-shaped, skirt pocket
and used the bright pink, spongy eraser
to erase him
from the image
of us skating out
among the placid white sailboats --
together.
There is no
“you and me”
“you and I”
anymore.
He had coolly taken the crisp,
ivory piece of paper
we were drawn on
for years,
crumpled it up
and threw us
in the trash bin suddenly,
left me there
under the kitchen scraps
and rubbish
until I couldn't breathe
couldn't pull myself up
from off the cold, tiled
bathroom floor,
my forehead pressed into
the ridges of the damp rug
where I had
curled into child's pose,
hands locked together
in prayer behind my neck
as I begged God
to deliver me
from the pain.
I erased him
as he erased me
cut me off
stopped
responding
to me.
Acted as if
I wasn't there
standing in front of him.
He made me invisible
I didn't exist anymore
hadn't spoken
cried
shouted.
No one had done that to me,
since I was a little girl
And my mother had ignored
me and my sisters
for days,
weeks.
In the end after college
for an entire summer.
He unraveled me
strand by strand
left me
a pile of discarded thread
in my sewing basket.
I thought that little girl
was dead.
I had buried her
blue swollen, suffocated face
behind my false mask
my adult persona
of strength
repose
quiet grace.
No one else
knew that she was still in there --
alive.
blond ringlets
chewed-down, bloody fingernails
deep below the layers
of my taffeta skirts
sewn inside the
metal zippers
of my black, cocktail dresses
Only he knew
about the cold queen mother
who could turn regally on
the thin side of a dime
snap her fingers quickly
and make a child disappear.
In the end,
he did the same.
