Mom and Dad fight at night
smashing fragile family joy
with words.
I am full of dread,
afraid that Cara and Christopher
the kids
will wake and hear.
The grown-ups now the ones making
all that racket.
I am
helpless. Can’t stop
anything,
including the tears on my pillow
that pool into sleep.
I dream that my bed is being pitched about by a sea of black
flowing roughly through my room.
Blacker than the color black
the empty black
of void.
I cling to the familiar white headboard of my raft until
everything is falling . . .
falling . . .
I flinch awake,
pulled back into
my parents’ screams of hate.