Vital

misogyny laced beer

My sister's household used to look pristine -
when she fell apart, it looked like a warzone
From floors you could eat off of, to an overflowing dirty sink;
it was no place to raise children, I knew that as a pre-teen


Children's toys, roaches, and stiff food
Pop cans on the ground
Old blankets used as curtains
Cigarette ashes leave a taste in your mouth


and I would use my weekends to come over
- asking for trash bags and cleaning supplies,
looking at the innocence in my niece's and nephew's eyes,
and praying pretty lies told to them can amount to a better life


And one day, as I dusted and organized the living room,
my sister's husband told me I would make a good wife
- that I would make some man very happy -
and at the time, I took it as a compliment and hoped he was right


but this was the man who enabled my sister's habits
and relished in his vices, who would drag on about better times
A man knee deep in laziness, ego, and pride -
that he couldn't see that children were living in his filth


This was the man who punched holes into walls,
who hid abuse so well that he even had me fooled,
who begged to be the first person I drank alcohol with -
a coward who thinks he's tall


I wish I would have told him that he was a terrible husband
and that he was slowly sucking the soul from his own wife
He can choke on his misogyny laced beer -
but I was a child trying to clean up a mess that was not mine