My blood splattered carpet

sitting at the very bottom.

I’m at the bottom of the street of the sloping curve my sisters and I ride down

With our tricycles, racing with our feet in the air, as we glued our eyes to each other, laughing nervously.

Hoping not to hit a car parked on the side or each other. Hoping to win the race down the street.

Sitting at the bottom near the edge of the grassy field

And holding my bloody nose:

The air is so high in the clouds, it’s not muggy out

It’s dry and hot

And beautiful.

It smells like the end of barbecue, a wafting of sizzling food being put away and the coals being burnt out and kids laughing and

My old friend is just up the street where I used to pop corn and laugh and sleep over at her house.

I taste the metal taste in my mouth, I bite my tongue so I stop feeling numb I’m so dizzy

But it doesn’t really taste like anything

I don’t really see or hear or taste or smell anything

It is all a memory that is whipped like that homemade whipped cream with heavy cream my mom makes for my dad's birthday pumpkin pies because his birthday is so close to Thanksgiving and she makes two pumpkin pies, one for him and one for…

My dad is driving in that truck I recognize and sees me sitting on the road with blood all over and picks me up and the police are all over, hovering the street like bees hover me when I mow the lawn

But don’t sting me because I leave them alone.

I go downstairs and I see my carpet.

It wasn’t like that before and it stays like that for years and years and no one tries to reject it or replace it

And the stain stays when I bring in my friends

Boyfriends

Girlfriends

And then…

The blood stained carpet is there, in my memory, my eyes can plainly see it as if it’s there in front of me.

Maybe it’s the way you were my mom and promised to keep getting new objects to beat me with until that object broke as you went upstairs and down to the basement where I was waiting in blood and tears

But you broke the object you

Broke

Me

And healing one day with Baba

In her front yard making dandelion necklaces

As I tried to remember if I could see the reason why

That huge blood stain on my carpet

Was still there

Waiting

Metal flavored, nice and red, bronze and brushed brown paintbrushed now with golden age, smelling of ash and incense and peppermints

Of loud music

And neverending stories I told everyone

That weren’t true

But I wished were true.