Creep Love by Michael Walsh

Author:Michael Walsh [Walsh, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781938769795
Publisher: Autumn House Press

V.

SWITCH OR AXE

Because someone has to go back, I return

to that boy showering, unaware of his stepdad

listening at the bathroom door with its little hook

for a lock. The man decides he’s had it

with the wife’s kid: it’s time to get a stick.

Get out now, I tell the boy, get dressed,

grab your smokes, a change of clothes,

the phone number of someone you love

who’s not related, and run. Whether he can hear

right then doesn’t matter. One day

he’ll understand who he had to save.

Leaving the kid, I follow my stepdad with the plan

outside to the spring trees bending green.

I tell the man, dead fifteen years now,

I found a way to forgive,

but stop anyway. Don’t transmit

your childhood—the axe through the TV

when you were watching Saturday morning cartoons,

and when you cried, the fists to your face.

One day his heart will break

over what he’s about to do. But today

he twists the green meat of a thick branch

until it snaps, strips the fresh bark

with his pocketknife like a hunter,

his law and mind untouchable,

certain of the correction necessary.

Back inside, he rams the bathroom door,

the hook popping. He yanks open

the shower curtain, revealing the boy

who can’t tell what weapon of choice

the intruder holds, dark and blurry.

I want to get in between the blinded child

and the screwup who’s trying

to be his father, to take the hits.

The man’s shouting gibberish, the kid’s

trying to protect his dick, the switch

landing on his arms, chest, thighs,

stomach, shoulders, hard enough to sting

but bruise minimally. The man’s got enough control

not to hit his face, his hands, anywhere

those welts can be seen. The way the pain settling

into softer flesh is the man’s way of saying

this boy’s spoiled life isn’t so bad.

He could’ve gotten the axe.

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