i.
My sister is in her room again, spilling tears on her diary pages.
Its leaves shake in fear as it receives lashes of anger and frustration.
We both know it listens more than our parents ever would.
ii.
We sit around the dining room table masquerading as a normal family.
But my father’s breath smells like liquor.
And my mother’s mascara has left stains on her cheek.
And my sister is tapping messages on my arm in Morse code.
How long until the masks come off?
iii.
One thing we’ve learned is how to bow our heads when he’s in a bad mood.
We count the seconds on our palms and wait ’til the storm resides.
Because the past one left us devastated.
But the weather knows no prayer.
The winds of his screams rattle us and shake us and displace us.
This time there’s no echo of crying.
All that’s left inside us is long gone.
We are hollow.
We are empty.
And it’s so hard to explain why thunder is terrifying.
sa gunita 