A House Full of Echoes

I hate the way he sounds.
I hate the way he yells.
But mostly, I hate the way his voice stays.

It doesn’t just stop when he stops.
It is a brutal architecture;
He builds a house out of noise
And makes us live inside it.

Even when he is silent, the echo is screaming.
It’s in the floorboards that groan under his weight.
It’s in the sharp, metallic snap of his keys.

His voice is a ghost that follows me into the kitchen.
A vibration in the glass of water I’m too afraid to spill.
It is so loud it leaves a bruise on the silence.

I hate the way he looks.
I hate the mirror most of all.
I am starting to look just like him.

Yesterday, I went home crying.
For fifteen years, I have been a scholar of this hatred.

I look out a window taped shut from the cracks.
And I see my room as a prison cell.
Painted in a color meant to look like love.

He painted these walls.

Sometimes, the air is too thin to breathe in here.
It’s all pink, with three stripes on top:
Light blue.
Maroon.
Green.

Three colors I have learned to despise.

I share this room with my mother
because she doesn’t like the sound of him either.
It echoes in her shoulders.
The way they hike up toward her ears like shields.

It echoes in the way I walk on my tiptoes.
A shadow in a house where the walls have ears
And his voice has teeth.

It is 8:25.
I am downstairs, anchored by the static of my mother’s shows.
But the clock is a countdown.

Soon, the gravel will crunch.
Soon, the door will swing.
And I will run.

I retreat to my sanctuary.
I hide under my blanket like it is armor.
I wait for the click.
The sound of his door closing.

Only then, do I truly wake up.

I carefully open my textbooks.
I trace the letters like a map
to a place he cannot find.
I read until the pink walls fade away.

I am not here.
I am a thousand miles deep in the page
Doing the only thing I know how to do
Planning my escape.