Lot stared at the painting on the wall. The faces of the folks in it all seemed familiar, but he could not seem to recall who exactly those people were. A young lady to his right, smiled at him then asked, “Do you happen to recognize these people in the painting?” Lot shook his head, “I’m afraid not. Sorry.” The young lady gave a slight nod, and then walked away. His nose picked up a familiar scent from her that of metals, chemicals, and flames— which in a gave a sort of troubling inkling of time dilation.

Lot decided to call it an early night. He shuffled wobbly on his feet back to his car of the future: the latest model of his creation at his advanced technology and vehicle company. His hands reached inside his pocket, and he thought he had placed his car keys in one of them, alas they were no where to be found. The young lady watched from a distance as Lot gradually began to be pulled out from his reality. He fumbled around looking for his car keys. Then he turned around to find that he was no longer in a parking lot, instead he was now in some kind of dark space matter which reminded him of the night sky. The only thing that it was missing were stars.

He called out for help several times. Then he heard the whispers of a familiar voice. Flashes of images all of a sudden burst into his mind. The young lady from before. He had not recognized her. She had looked familiar. But why? Lot realized a second too late who the young lady he had bumped into was. How could he have forgotten her? How long had it been since he had last seen…? Wait, now he had figured it out. She was a face he had thought he’d never see again. Although, he had tried to forget about what he had done in his past, the images of the warrior princess from his past still haunted him. Now her daughter had come back to seek vengeance for her own Ima.

Lot had also forgotten that in his past he was inspired to create artwork that resembled his victories. He had stumbled upon a peaceful village, or group of people on a nearby planet. Using all his weaponry on his spaceship, he’d taken matters into his own hands to destroy that place. Unbeknownst to him, the warrior princess had hidden the heir to the throne in a time capsule. It froze as it made its way to a safer planet: Earth. Once it landed in a peaceful and quiet remote area, it opened up and the little Queen was raised by the legendary Azur warriors. She had dedicated her whole life to making sure whoever killed her parents, and home would pay dearly with their life. Even if it meant she would have to find a way to travel through space, and time— to eventually have her revenge.

#CORVUS.

Thorsday 31st July, 2025.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xlRKXtIg080

Cliche that I tried, cared and tried. Tattoos permanently on your thighs. Marilyn Manson the guise. Gay. Lame. Fake. Fruit flies. Sweet yet nasty. At the split you devise, the right life, you have comprised, transition, reprise. You're married now but where am I.

It's great to grow and behold. Feed and grow old. It was never in what I knew for you. You wild little screw. But trust im happy, maybe, fuck me. What I've seen is dirty, messy, and skitzy. Doesn't change a thing, I miss thee.

You are chubby, pink, and stinky. But you chose everything but me. Sour days in bed talking to mom. Her fly trap over flow-ed. You're dad drums of gold. I tried, you saw some value in a beat persistent as a nuclear mossad.

We shared good taste in music. You showed me Gun Ship. NO² fits. With our agressive addiction fit. Happy songs I never thought were congruent, with you. With me. Yet you let it be, with no commitment at this vanishing point.

Years later I wrote this, thunk this, hate this. Not at all worried you can dissect this. Attack this. And. Trivialize this. My only hope is you never see this.

My folks’ marriage lasted ten years and produced two children. They’d been high school sweethearts; Pop the quarterback of a small town football team, Mom the pretty cheerleader. My father went to Ole Miss, the same as his father, and my mother went to The Mississippi State College for Women, not because she cared anything about schooling (not much was required of women educationally in those days, and all she really wanted, or so she says, was to be “Mrs. Bubba Morris”), but she went because her mother wanted her to go, and because Bubba had not yet asked for her hand. Anyways, their marriage came immediately after college, then came a daughter, then a son, creating the perfect little family.

I have heard rumors of infidelity. I don’t know if they are true or not. Neither parent has said so, though both my mother and older sister have hinted at it. True or not, he didn’t want the divorce. He fought it, just as he fought for the custody of his children, though he never stood a chance in this legal system of ours, whether he had cheated or not.

My dad, though mostly good natured and agreeable, was somewhat controlling (alpha’s usually are). This I know. And though some of my parents’ arguments seemed silly at the time, those issues make more sense to me now that I am grown, and understand life a little better. It was a long time ago, but I still recall a huge blow-up caused when Mom died her hair blonde without telling Dad her plans. She’d been a nervous wreck all day, waiting for him to come home from work, afraid he wouldn’t like it. In my innocence I remember thinking her new hair was pretty, although she didn’t look like my mom anymore. Well, she’d been right to be nervous. Pop didn’t like it. Not a bit. He didn’t want to be married to Marylin Monroe. There’d been a lot of yelling, and a lot of crying. The hair change was, of course, not “the reason”, but then not much time passed afterward before they finally sat me and my sister down and explained to us what divorce means, though it turned out they really didn’t know any more about divorce than we did, and were wrong in most everything they told us. The only part, in fact, that they’d gotten right was that, “Daddy will be moving out.” Making the only correct part of the conversation also the most painful part.

I’ll tell you what divorce really means for kids, at least what it meant in my home. What it really means is something no parent is ever going to admit to themselves, much less explain to their children. Divorce means the disappearance of discipline in the home. All semblance of it leaves with the man. It means a single parent in the home who cries a lot, which undermines the feeling of stability that a “home” should offer its children. It makes for a mother who craves her kids’ approval so much that she tries to be their friend, rather than their parent. She gives in too much. She is too soft on punishment. She leaves them alone too much partly because she has no choice (latch-key kids was the popular term back in my day), and partly because she is trying to build herself a new life. So she invites strange men into the house, each one of these strangers proving traumatic for her children for many different reasons, no matter the manner of man that they are.

And worst of all the mother will use the child’s infrequent visitations with his father as threats. “When you go to your father’s next weekend you’ll have to explain all of this!”

And I would have to explain it, too, which only served to make me dread seeing my father instead of looking forward to our rare visits. The real conversation should have been: “Why not now, Mother? Why don’t you just handle it yourself? Why push it off on him? Did this bad thing I did not happen on your watch?” But of course, the child is too young to begin such a conversation. And to be sure, the things I did that might have made her appear to be a bad mother somehow never got communicated to him, though he had to have seen them; the smoking at fourteen, the drinking and weed at fifteen, the long hair, the falling grades, etc. But hell, he didn’t want to be the bad guy when he only dealt with me about twice a year, I guess. So it never got mentioned, leaving me free to roam as I would, with whomever I would.

As I am writing this an uncomfortable, but familiar tightness has balled up my stomach, a forgotten feeling left-over from those days which has crept back in from the depths where it has laid hidden all these years. I do not miss this old feeling, which is causing my leg to bounce beneath the table, an ugly response to uncontrollable situations that has remained with me since childhood. So then, the old angsts are not gone, are they? And are quick to return alongside the distressing memories, blast them all!

It could be worse, of course. It could actually have been way worse. I know that. I really have little to complain about. I could have lost my parents, as many unfortunates have. Or I could have had a mother who didn’t try as hard as mine did, or care as much. I could have ended up with two Mom’s in the house instead of a step-father… or worse, two Dads! Hell, I could have been aborted at the start. So at least I had a chance, and I am eternally grateful for that. Life is good.

I am satisfied with the man I am, and my parents deserve the credit for it more than anyone else, but it might have been better too… with a bit more discipline and a tad less freedom? I might have stuck with school, cultivated better friends, and partied less. Who knows what might have been, had the right man come home through the front door every night at quitting time, sitting down to table with a healthy curiosity about my day; sharing his experience, expounding his logic, and demonstrating his strength? What kind of difference might that have made in my life, and in my sisters’?

My mother tried, bless her heart. She really did. She was just incapable of being two parents. Many people are incapable of that, in fact, believe that truth or not. The family unit evolved as it did over centuries for many reasons. It worked, too. Rather, it works still, when given the chance.

It is just a damned shame that those chances happen so rarely these days.

And that it is the kid who is left to harbor the grudge. What an ungracious little shit.

Stepped out into the oppressive rain

Cycling through my veins is generational pain

The tires are fine but im finally tired

I'll take whats deserved not just whats desired

Broken bottle in my hand imitating me with jagged edges

Spines born of injustice and sad ragged vestiges

The rain weighing down the fabric of my clothes

Like the roots of my family tree pulling till im alone

“Sir you should look at this” I feint needing help

I cant stop imagining him on the ground bleeding out

My freedom in reach, just a red bag away

Enclosed within; my entire lifetimes pay

Not taking me seriously, just waving me off

My blood boils yet my voice remains soft

“Sir id like your opinion on what to do now”

He sets down his phone and takes a step out

As he descends to the wheel

The target of his attention

I take a deep breath

Ready to teach him this lesson

My arms start the motion

To force the bottle in deep

I squint expecting blood

Then glass and head meet

I felt the resistance

The pushback was skull

My hands are shaking

I cant feel them at all

My future now for the first time uncertain

Cause I ended one but became a bad person

I stick around long enough to listen

To his breathing cease and see his pool of blood glisten

I grab the bag and start sprinting away

Thinking of how much tomorrow wont be today

I just have to escape, turn tail and be gone

Cause of course the main suspect is the rickshaw man's son

You cant climb a ladder that doesn't touch the ground

You cant be a success when no hope can be found

Try and evolve oppressed in desolation

And you'll find yourself understanding my situation

Its years gone now and I live like a king

My life is soo different and I dont regret a thing

This world is a mess this country is worse

It could be a bit better if you put yourself first

It's hard to let go of something you never actually had. Some luxury all made up in your mind. Sure, he was physically there, sometimes, but you craved a father so desperately you accepted that. You were even satisfied in that piece of your brain. But then you grow older and realize why are you the only one putting in effort to this relationship? He's the adult, he's the one who took custody of you, took you away from your mother and your siblings. But he never wanted to see you. You learn to misbehave because you know his only joy in life is taking control. Punishment and control, it's like his heroin, he'd inject it in his veins if he could. His attention is your drug, though. If you could grab his attention with your hand, you'd crush it up into a fine powder and snort it.

He won't change.

You told yourself your whole life he'd do better someday. That he loves you deep down, even if he never says or shows it. You try and try to build a relationship, but he doesn't care. The second you are out of his grasp he reaches out to you like you said his name 3 times in the mirror with the lights off. Bloody hand reaching for you, begging you to let it in. If you just let it in everything will be better. Forget what it was like before it'll be different this time, he's changed.

He won't change.

You go full no contact. You don't talk to him for years. You need time.

Even when he's not around you spend every extra second thinking about what you'd say to him. You practice the speech in the mirror. You never say any of it to him.

There's no way to forgive him. Stop trying. You can't move on mentally, but you no longer need to feel his addiction. You don't have to hear his voice or see his face ever again. So, you may not be able to forgive, but you're not doing too bad these days.

It is a memory from the rafters of days long gone. It holds no dearness of heart or sweet song, but inundates in a taste most vile of lasting resentment. At least the choice is mine now, so I always choose to drown the memory along with its tattered dreams.

When it manages to rise, however, it transpires clearly as though born anew each time, to haunt with a predatory nature, traipsing through submerged scenes.

I see a single slipper, lying on a leaf strewn lawn, its pale pink loveliness decorated in small roses. It is a stark reminder of beauty framed in man’s cruelty, its delicateness wrapped in the wrath of a single man's actions. It is a moment frozen in time, emblazoned with impending doom, a failure fueled by anger and drunkenness, manifested in a fist of rage supreme. Time is suspended and cemented betwixt dark violence and pale weakness, all hope tattered and destroyed amongst the withered eaves.

It resides deep, a memory best forgotten, yet resurfacing too often to tease and taunt while replaying like a reel-to-reel old-fashioned movie. The main character’s fist looms high as though he's Caesar, come to conquer Rome and its surroundings. He strikes a pose of intimidation and swings, the force and brevity of his fist unjust, unkind as two sets of youthful eyes look on in abject fear. She’s thrown, stumbles and falls, while her slipper flies high, descending in an arc before landing with a thud on a bed of cracked leaves, its final resting place.

It was an onslaught, a barrage of emotions that sprang forth inside, scarring youth’s survival, and all within a single breath and heartbeat. Disbelief, angst, disappointment, horror, anger, loathing, and something more substantial, akin to hatred, sprouted to take root with its intensity carried on wings of youth’s wide-eyed innocence. A new perception of a man who dared call himself ‘father and husband’; innocence and illusions flew away on wings of something sinister, crudely alarming in its cold, dispelling truth.

Life’s winding path of crevices can pivot, leaving one stumbling in efforts to spurn the recurrence of such resentments. Still, despite the best of endeavors, steadfast and firm, they will latch tight, though years drift by, some slowly and some swiftly, and a time of treasured golden haze arrives. The struggle to reconcile past resentments remains resolute, a firm impediment and harsh reality, encompassing the circles of our lives.

I think it will be never - no, never though I live a thousand years - never will my mind release the sordid memory buried within the crux of my soul's depth, of one solitary, rose encrusted, and pink slipper – my dear, soft, sweet, treasured mother’s lonely shoe – discarded, much like her broken, dying marriage, upon a bed of withered brown and scattered leaves.

No, I think it will be never………….no, never though I live a thousand years………

Cynthia D Calder, 08.13.25