Its more peaceful than I could have ever
Imagined. Once the initial sting
Of the coarse rope circling
My neck vanished, it felt
Nice, swaying.
My vision blurred as I stared,
Stared, stared at my absurdly
Disembodied feet. That's funny,
I thought, through a haze of calm,
Those look like Daddy's shoes.
Children's lives are meant to be full of laughter
Smiles, cuddles, running through an icy
Sprinkler when it's a hot day, in the big
Green front yard, enclosed by a white
Picket fence.
I'm going to have to disappoint
You, and say that I had all of that.
The perfect little girl's life, packed
With Barbie dolls and fluffy
Pink pillows and fairy bread.
But I also had something
Else.
That no child should ever have.
Daddy's hands first saught me when I was five
Years old. He was pouring my favorite, pink
Strawberry scented bubble bath into
The already frothing tub as I splashed
Happily.
"More, Dad!"
"More? MORE, Lottie?", I remember him
saying in an over-dramatic, playfully shocked voice.
Memory cuts to him soaping my
Back, fingers running lightly over
My slightly protruding vertebrae.
And then his hands, slick with
Water, began seeking another place.
"Daddy?"
"Shh, Charlotte, darling. Shh"
He found me that day, not long after my
Seventeenth birthday,
Swinging softly from the rope,
Called the ambulance,
Held my hands as I sunk into a land
Of wailing sirens and creeping fingers,
"Lottie", he kept saying.
"Lottie"