The Life of a Salesman

I

Swimming towards the point
of not breaking.

In retrospect,
the lake was the most cunning,
with its murk and non-descriptive
mask.

II

Northern Saskatchewan beckons
to the ‘leave me alone’ plenty.
And from scraping
the gum off of spit-shined Italian loafers,
they come,
as ‘the don’t want to be seen’,
to live for a moment
as they wish they could – to leave
and forget (with their briefcase of pike)
that they
had ever
lived.

III

I caught a 35 lb jack that day.

It floated up like a dead and porous
log that had forgotten
it had ever seen the sun.

I could barely hold the monster.
It was huge, with its gaping mouth
of no words.

My stomach still churning from seeing
him bashing in the jack’s brains
with a slightly triumphant, and cocky, ‘I
just did something you hate, and I
like it’ sneer –
but
I held it up anyway,
for the Polaroid camera,
so all the world would see –

I was here.

IV

My small thumb slid into its unknown depths –
(affronted by its girth
and dead log weight)
through its gills, and into its cavernous
maw of spiked teeth.

I’ll never forget how it felt to be
ripped,
from the inside out,
by jaws with no remorse –

and yet,
I have forgotten everything else.

V.

The cabin stood small,
the dock lay short –
filled with the imminent.

The maniacal miscreant grabbed his gun
shooting it out into the day,
hoping to scare off the fact that he was
5’8 and full of fear.
The wistful smoke
hung
in the hot, still
air waiting
for an excuse to blow
for what seemed like
an eternity.

VI.

They kicked him off of the force
after getting 15 counts (excluding myself)
of child molestation charges.
None of those 15 girls (from 7-15 years of age)
would testify –
(or could, barring blackened barbaric, but ingenious
wiping)

in the end his face;
that grin;
the shame;
the whispers –
(threats/brainwashing/twisting and teeth gnashing)

it was down to my old best friend
(she lived a few doors down from us
when we were 6 and 7)
and myself, to testify.

I have but 2 memories of him,
and much to my guilt,
my disjointed childhood madness/memories
were not enough to stay
that shit-eating grin of his.

No-one else talked.

VII.

He sells real estate today.
Real estate.
Can you believe it?

VIII.

That day…

with him at the lake…

I thought he loved me.

Funny how the wind
turns…

Funny how the tortured mind
buries its dead;
its unnecessary; its
must-never-remember-for-if-you-do-
you-will-surely-end-up-in-a-rubber-room,
memories.

Funny
how the heart
never forgets its dead -
like a film covering the our every
untouchable movement.

Funny how I thought for all those years
he was my real dad (the whispers…whispers…)

but as it turns out,

he was just a man
who sells real estate.

© Kristin Reynolds 12 08

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Tags:

chilhood, evil, father, forgiveness, molestation, overcoming, pain, release, sexual abuse, step father and suffering