They all think that I’m gone.

 

The police think that I’ve been taken.

 

 Snatched from the side of the road.

 

Rough hands grabbing my arm, covering my mouth. 

 

My feet scrambling for purchase in the dry dust.

 

Dragged backwards into a sinister looking car.

 

Taken from a loving Mother and Father,

 

Missed by distraught siblings.

 

Mother believes I am lost or late or something.

 

  Soon she will see me coming up the track as she looks through the kitchen window doing dishes.

 

 So she continues to look.

 

Father knows that I have run.

 

 His guilt tells him so.

 

 I hear them shuffling, chairs scraping. 

 

Through the looking glass  crack of the pantry door, I see father’s eyes.

 

 Preoccupied, he’s searching  for ghosts. 

 

I see his seething, a tide of crimson rising up from his collar line. 

 

With clenched fists he paces.

 

Frenzied by the presence of outsiders, he is curt in his responses.

 

With eyes down cast, my sisters huddle.

 

It is not our father that they see

 

But fury stitched into a suit.

 

 There was no sympathy for the potentially dead.  Even less for the disobedient.

 

They all wish me dead.

 

A detective lays a comforting hand on my Mothers shoulder.

 

 She writhes as if touched by death. 

 

But she is good at this, and the man is unaware that her insides are shriveling.

 

Silence ticks like a metronome.

 

We await the stranger’s departure, then the family’s real search will begin.

 

Father will strip the house bare till he finds me.

 

He knows my disdain, has seen contempt in my gaze.

 

I am not sure of my plan.

 

I am only 12 after all.

 

But I know strangers will be no help.

 

Crouched in my space, I listen for the screen doors shriek.

 

The mumbling reassurances of men tell me Father has ushered them all into the front yard.

 

I imagine his hand raised in farewell, as the car’s dust plumes blow a insolent raspberry.

 

The steps of the back porch bow and complain.

 

But my time there is brief.

 

Through the yard, and towards the fence

 

Dried old tufts of grass whip my legs.

 

They won’t stop me, I’m nearly there.

 

Freedom pumps through me like a rushing of blood as I pause at the fence line.

 

 A drum beat pounds from within. 

 

The bottom stringer sags under the weight of my foot, as I prepare to swing on over, to fly.

 

 As mean, cruel fingers bite into my arm, and I am yanked to the ground. 

 

The breath of relief knocks out of me.  So to the life imagined in a millisecond.

 

He stands over me, sneering.

 

Beady crow’s eyes are on me,

 

With vulpine lips parted, he breaths close to me.

 

With cunning, he takes his time.

 

There was no stepping back from the edge.

 

This time, Father was walking right off

 

And he was taking me with him.

 

 

 

 

 

In the falling snow, I hold your hand.   The chill bites at my fingertips.

 We walk, headed for the taxi across the street.  The cold rises up through my soles as I look at you, your overcoat swallowing your frail frame.  I see you now, as you see yourself, as someone else.  As something else.   Your face is tight like  balloon skin, teeth jutting, once a perfect size, now hideous against thin lips.  Eyes set deep in their sockets look back at me as I reach up to trace  the pattern of your skull.  Hard and finite it brags of inevitability.  Short stubby lashes blink me away.  From under your hat, I see the smatterings of new hair, darker than before.  Like baby roots under the loam. 

 Occasionally the wind blusters past us, flapping your coat open.  I can sense the weight in you pocket, and imagine the bottle inside.   The yellow label and the words Nembutal inscribed on the outside, exactly as you had showed me on the website. 

Silence walks between us as we cross the road.   Cars passing , their headlights dull against the gloom.  The fumes from the exhaust taste like poison.  I imagined this would be different.  That moments of bittersweet symbolism would etch this moment in my mind always.  Instead, the bare trees feel full of crows.  I want to stand by the cab forever. 

 Heavy with sadness, my head drops.  The sharp spikes of your beard scrape along my cheek, burning with the cold.  My hands grab for you, feeling thin shoulders and hollowed bones.  Skeleton fingers wrap my wrists. 

 There is no goodbye, we’ve done that already, and as you enter the cab, I hear you give the driver the address.  You tell him you’re tired and may sleep for the duration of the trip.  Not to wake you.  You pull the door shut, the noise like an axe cutting off a limb.  You hunker down in the corner of the seat, like a child in their father’s favourite chair, and your hand dips into you pocket.  It is your favourite drive, and I see you remembering times and places and faces, before taking that fatal sip and slipping away.  I imagine the drivers irritation upon arrival, and wonder if he will take the fifty dollar note you have left for him in your wallet.

  Pulling sharply out into the traffic the cab screeches as it breaks heavily at the lights.  The sound jangles at my nerves, my skin brittle. 

I wait for you to turn, to look at me one final time, but the cab is gone.  I stand and watch its invisible trail.  The wind howls hollow against my ears.  Alone, flakes land upon my face like frozen tears and I whisper…”Goodbye Daddy.”