First Sentence

First Sentence  

I cannot remember my first word,  

but I do recall my first sentence:  

cribbed in a box with the lid on,  

kept by a familial jailer with a sour tongue, 

under house arrest  

where sheets were hot wet prisons. 

I was moon-stricken 

when hands larger than God  

clawed my skin  

and pulled at my hair. 

No night was safe from your finger-hooks. 

No day was free of your iceberg pettiness  

And petty grievances  

contrived at your desk. 

And look, there’s your new husband:  

a grey shadow  

flat and cringing,  

cowering like a frightened schoolboy   

detained beneath the blackboard. 

You always were the one  

with the chalk in your hand.  

One day I did what you could never understand.  

I walked up and out  

on legs you could not cripple,  

with a spine you could not bend.  

I was no longer the child  

in that box  

In that house. 

You held the keys  

but I was the one who broke the lock 

and opened the door.  

And the first sentence I ever truly spoke  

was the one you didn’t expect to hear:  

I am leaving – and no, mother, I am  

not coming back.