You taught me how to ride a bike,
you hoisted us onto your shoulders
so we could try to reach the fireworks in July,
and something in the way
you always had ice cream ready at the end of hot days
made it easy to look the other way

When you’d scream

When the anger would mold
your smile
into something swollen,
tongue scorching,
body molten
with glazed eyes
and a cracking, kiln blasted heart

It made it easy
the mornings after,
to sit in silence as you made pancakes
and not see the singed edges of the room,
or the flecks of ash that nestled
still smoking
in our hair

It made it hard,
when your words bloomed
into purple blossoms on our skin,
to see, even from a distance,
the brokenness lying all around us
in the wake of you

And the bruises that have faded
are not the ones that keep me up some nights.
It’s the charred, hardened pieces
baked deep
well beyond the reach of sight
that I fear may never heal