The Faintest Dream

This Is Me

I can’t believe I still remember the softness and warmth I felt when I was with him, the one boy who made me feel special like a new-bloomed blossom. He would treat me like I was his only love his fiore special, which is Italian for special flower. My name is Maloney Heart, and I dream my life. The life I wish the life I want and the life I love. Then I wake up, to find the reality of the life I have never wanted, the life I have lived for 16 years. I longed to escape my destiny to become a laundress like my mother at Jeff’s Wonder Laundry. The owner Jeff, is my moms husband and my “father.I know he is only marrying my mom because she is pretty. She has long oil black hair that falls down her back like a black waterfall. Her eyes are like brown Belgian chocolate. Her skin is a healthy oak wood color and is as smooth as silk. We have almost no money so she wears the same dirt stained yellow and pink dress every day with her faded blue old rain boots. This was all she had when she was a little girl about my age. When she met Jeff she signed a contract saying she was and always would be under his protection and command. It is more like a strip club to me but they can call it what they want. My mom comes home almost every night half naked, makeup smudged, drunk and clumsy and sometimes beaten with bruises allover her face. I felt demented and sorrowful for her. Even every day when she came home she would walk up to me once she cleaned up her bleeding scars and got into her old white robe PJ’s she would say “One day, I’ve dreamt about that day, one day…” I would put on my confused face and she would walk to bed and just say go to bed you have school tomorrow. The years went on like this.