Courageous Nerd

Unsure... I made the rounds today. She's still here, with her beautiful eyes. She smiled weakly as I approached, and I tried to force a smile from my sad, sad heart. No words were said, not just because it hurt her physically, but because they weren't needed. And her voice tore at me. I don't ask, she doesn't answer. I just tentatively touch her throat and her abdomen; she nods when it hurts, shakes her head when it doesn't. I ruffle her hair, take down notes and turn away. I swallow as I go, my throat burning. My wife is sad. I can feel it. She doesn't want me to go back to the room. It depresses me, and it rubs off on her. She cries when she thinks I'm not looking. We both know that I can't do enough. It's a losing battle. Her giggle. I'd forgotten she could do that. She loved these kinds of videos, where a silly cat is trying to do something and fails so terribly at it, or a well-trained dog is showing how smart it is, turning on a fan and stu...

We'd Never Heal... The scars would never leave, etched on our hearts. Mama’s voice, pleading. Papa screaming into her face. Each night, the belt would leave his trousers and caress Mama’s skin. We’d huddle in a corner, our breaths hitching, afraid to make a sound. We’d learned, from the day Dimma had tried to intervene. The welts gifted to her lectured us. Mama’s voice soon stopped. She took it, for days, without a sound. She should have known better. Papa liked her pleading. He dropped his beloved weapon and picked up the stool. I still hear the crack when it landed on Mama’s head. I kept hearing the crack when I picked up the fork on the table. The crack got louder when Papa looked at me, shock on his face as I rushed to him, my weight knocking him down. The crack became an anthem, in sync with the fork as I stab-stab-stabbed Papa. All the fear, the hate, the pain, flowing through those three prongs. I was still stabbing when Dimma dragged me away, the crack resonating in my head...