Growing up in Grapevine,
I never heard the voice of God,
only the screeches of my step-father competing
with the dull sky roar of wing’d machines.
Sound carries far across weed-choked
fields. The gunshot, crack-of-the-whip
crispness, but a deer’s dying breath 
leaves no echo. Skeletons 
were not hard to find,
skinned carcasses lay in honeysuckle shrouds,
and the dogs played fetch with jaw bones.

I collected teeth,
pretended to be an Indian, prayed
for poor cold souls. Prayed for God to rescue me
from that place, prayed for God to kill him. 
I prayed with my cheek to the dirt, body curled up 
tightly, eyes wide open. I tasted grit,
and primordial fear—
the old cowering deference
of the female to the father, to the son, to the male.

My favorite spot was beneath the house;
a loose board in the skirt could be moved.
He, had only to stoop and drag his nose
closer to the earth, to find me. I held my breath 
and dug nails into palms, when his voice of wrath
howled again, commanding
me to stop hiding, to get
what was coming to me.

But no;
his mud-crusted boots
stomped on beyond
the edges of my plywood peep-hole. 
The thin switch trailed behind,
catching on brambles and poke salad leaves,
as my bare legs would do,
when the slam
of the door 
signaled, 
his momentary defeat. 
He never surrendered, and God,
God never said a word. 

We escaped
after my mother 
earned bruises 
on both wrists.

Something he didn’t like about her new job.
Fifteen years ago, I prayed for God to kill him,
but he still breathes.
 
If God is anywhere,
He 
is there— 
tangled in the bushes.

             This poem pulls from actual childhood experiences that I had. We grew up in the country, and deer-hunting was a popular sport. I collected the teeth from deer jaw bones, pretended that it was some sort of Native American currency. The carcasses were not uncommon. I felt bad for these sweet, innocent creatures. My step-father would often go into violent rages, and I would run outside and hide, usually under the porch, or at the edge of our field if I had time to run farther. The main idea this poem expresses is that in the world of Grapevine, all good, pure, and lovely things— the deer, childhood innocence, even God himself— have been murdered by the violent wiles of man. Man won. All of our faces found the dirt.

             This poem was written a good while ago, when I was twenty years old. I was a very depressed and angry little girl, due to growing up in a neglectful and abusive environment. I was intelligent enough to look around me and see that my friends didn’t have it quite the same way as I had it, and I was jealous of their intact family units, their loving mothers and fathers. I really struggled with the basic unfairness of the world, with questions like, how can a loving God let innocents be born into so much suffering, strife, and violence? I still don’t have a great answer to that question, other than I now know that it’s not only God who is operating in our world— true evil abounds. Just because it happens, doesn’t mean that God willed it to be so.

             As a grown woman, I now regard all of the suffering that I went through as part of the painful but necessary process of growth. Would I sign up to ride that ride again? Heck no! I’m so glad to be out of that “season” of my life, to use the tabernacle vernacular popular currently. But as a good and wise friend has told me many times, “God doesn’t waste anything. He can use it all.” With that in mind, maybe my experiences, thoughts, and feelings can bring hope or healing to someone else. May God now use me as an instrument of His peace.