I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

Neo, come spend some time outside with me.
Don’t you have any friends you want to play with?
Put the pen down, c’mon.
Don’t buy that book, it’ll put poison in your head.
Neo! Put that stuff away. Let’s go.
Don’t read that gay shit. Fucking hell.
Give that to me! Where did you get this!? What kind of faggot gave
you this!? Tell me!
One night, I came home from school with a smile on my face. A boy
sat next to me on the bus and called me pretty. He kissed my cheek
and told me to keep it a secret and I felt something so new:
Butterflies in my stomach, jitters, the good kind, an excitement that
could not be stolen.
Or so I thought.
I wrote a story about the boy and me and you ripped it out of my
hands and read it in full.
Then you took off your belt and whipped me with it. You locked me in
the closet for over a day and a half. Mom cried, screaming at you to
let me out. Finally, when you left, she ran upstairs. You’d hit her too.
Her lip was split and she couldn’t open one of her eyes. She let me
out and collected me in her arms. I’d pissed myself and I was
shaking, but mom didn’t care. She hugged me and apologized.
She bathed me, washed my clothes, and in an oddly intimate way,
we patched each other up. I dabbed her lip with a cotton ball and she
put ointment on the lashes.
I’m glad you weren’t there to apologize. It’s your apologies that were
the cruelest.