I remember—

I remember—

one cramped bedroom,

seven siblings,

a slew of strangers

never leaving with the rats.

Each morning, a shadowy lump

sprawled atop that leathery sofa.

His urban threads

illuminating;

His smooth complexion

radiating

Amid bleak sunrises

emanating,

generating blue-black shine

through our apartment.

I remember stale human fumes,

a miasma around that sofa,

—that decayed, despisd sofa—

reeking of met

and unmet desires;

leeching love from our apartment.

I remember crouching behind that blackened sofa,

clutching siblings two and four,

my winces matching time

to a stranger’s wallops

—and I can still hear those endless wallops—

dull thuds absorbed

into the fabric of our hiding spot.

Greeting the world in unison,

I remember siblings five, six,

seven,

squealing at the squalor

choking them; surviving

between battered cushions,

their backs streaked in black

and blue.

And leaping from those haggard cushions,

rotted wood gave way;

from upended floorboards, a screech;

eyes widened--

a million

writhing

worm tails—

Rat nest in our apartment.

For the umpteenth time

she yanked me back

For the very first time she bruised me.

Black.

Eyes widened—

a soft hand withdrawn,

but some bruises never left

with the rats.

Plopping softly on that sunken sofa,

atop those matted, tatted cushions

I remember sibling eight.

The memory of his silence,

a deafening explosion of lifelessness,

forever woven

into the fabric of that haunting sofa.

That haunting, stained sofa.

Leeching life from our apartment.

Now smudged with rouge,

I remember that dusty sofa.

An endless torrent of black and blue

and me,

her little helper.

Never without her little helper.

Her bruises never gone,

never hidden behind her mask,

never invisible

with the rats.