It’s so confusing and it all hurts

It’s so confusing and it all hurts

It was just hard to understand.

Emotions torn, divided between reality
and that eerie world enveloped by a fog
that cannot be navigated even by feeling.

A serial abuser -
the evenings when he nurtured his own sadness in alcohol -
marinated into mindless rage.

He beat, then ravaged his children.
The next morning
with tears flowing down his cheeks
got them, motherless,
dressed, and off to school.

At age 9,
he could hear behind the closed door,
his older sister’s pleas of: “No daddy, please no..”
Shortly thereafter, the threshold to horror opened,
his father loomed with belt in hand -
the young boy snapped – took the shotgun
which his Dad left loaded,
pulled the trigger -
hit the target – not the skeet
which his Pop and he would gun down
on a Saturday morning.

She was old enough to remember
times of pleasantry -
when her mother was still alive
those agreeable days
before her brother’s birth accompanied their mother’s death,
before her father lost himself -

and now – seven years later -
when she returns from a Sunday visit
to the institution where her brother now resides
it remains still all so confusing -

Who to love and why?
When everything just hurts.

Ray Brown