Today we wrap up #VerseLove 2024 at http://www.ethicalela.com with a prompt from Dr. Sarah Donovan, inviting us to choose a favorite prompt from the month and write another poem on that same prompt. I chose Stacey Joy’s In Our Mama’s Kitchens and Fran Haley’s The First Time. A very special thanks to Sarah Donovan and to Two Writing Teachers for giving us a space to write and grow and encourage each other. I look back as a preacher’s kid growing up in a household where one truly never knew which way the ball was coming, and today’s poem takes me back to the first time I knew I needed to hold on tight.
Pastorium Perils
late summer 1971 in rural Reynolds, Georgia the land of peach trees in their time of ripeness
Mama was pregnant with my baby brother and we were in the den Mama Daddy and me when
~~whoosh~~
in through the kitchen door a naked girl with long wet hair streaked through our house holding a towel screaming all the way down the hall to my parents’ bedroom
locking the door on her heels her stepdad pounding and screaming threatening her life I recognized them from church
I was five the girl was a teenager (with flapping boobs ……and hair….down there?) her stepdad was drunk
my mother clutched me carried me like a football into my room locked the door
then ran through the connecting bathroom
I followed, fearful to stay alone crawled under their bed
Mama found the girl huddled in the bottom of their closet shaking crying uncontrollably wailing for help Mama comforted her clothed her sat on the bed holding her
called the cops
we listened in fear for Dad as we waited
those slurred screams of fury are seared into my memory forever
she comes with me or I’ll go get my ruiner and ruin you
then more voices, the crash of a lamp furniture slamming
handcuffs, arrest, police report one prominent family in ruins
exposed
it was the first time I knew growing up a preacher’s kid would bring a whole cast of characters always calling mostly clothed
it was the first time I saw a naked teenager running for her life
