No One was Physically Hurt

There are moments I remember that are not really dramatic in modern TV terms — someone got mad and stormed away. No one got hurt. But a little bit of open exploration reveals the craters left behind by the smallest of these meteorites.

You bought the desk and the chair for me at the flea market.

(I’m sure you talked the guy down a little bit,

you were good at that with your blue-eyed charm.)

My uncle needed a chair to paint the ceiling—

white to match the cleaned up walls.

You came home after he was done,

after he was long gone,

when my mother sat on the floor with cleaner and a rag,

lovingly cleaning the paint from the chair

before she gave it back to me.

And you exploded.

Stomping hard enough to shake the cups in the new glass-front cabinet.

Speaking hard enough to stop all motion —

my mother with the rag raised over the last spot of paint,

me pressed into the hallway wall,

my brother somewhere out of sight behind a door.

You threw out your rage at us and left.

(You never asked me what I thought.

The chair was mine, after all.

I was happy for my uncle to use it

because he sang me silly songs while he painted.)

Sometime later you came back without your rage.

You left it in the tire tracks of a long drive,

in my mother’s tensing back,

in my still-forming heart

in the way I faced the world for years to come.