The Arsonist
And as the smoke swallowed the stars
The flame burnt through the dark;
The night alive
With the arsonist’s fire.
Over flowers and grass in her front garden she stumbled
As the blood orange and golden house behind her crumbled.
Her honey-dark skin left laced with ash
Grey rain intertwines with her hair and atop her eyelash.
She had to kill him: that father of hers,
For the abuse she endured for sixteen long years.
It never mattered, to her, that her mother was inside,
She watched each attack: she too deserved to die.
Her father, her lover
And her sister was another,
But she believed her fathers lies,
Thought the bastard all wise.
Daddy was everything to her:
Father, lover, king, abuser.
He’d buy her toys, lace and leather
Kissed her goodnight and a future together.
Each slap was a spark and each kiss, a flame.
He stepped on her neck and kissed her again.
Her mother, like a mistress, all she did was stand by
And from the other room she could hear her baby cry.
Yet the arsonist did not stir,
She did not say a word.
Her demons spoke for her: with each time her legs spread
Another voice whispered in her head.
Not a broken home; but a home from hell
With each little rape a secret she would never tell.
And as she walks from her house and each flame cracks
The night hides the eyes of the girl who just snapped.
Her sister, afraid, curled in the corner.
Her father, aflame, spinning like a dancer.
And her mother, a fall, a charred corpse,
These are the bodies her father’s sins brought.
Poetry by Luke Cable 