{..}<\/p>\n
in my dreams and after the fact of
\nmy six year old self
\nrunning in circles around my father
\nholding my right hand with his left
\nleft hand switching blow after blow
\non my growing welted legs
\ndeathly afraid i couldn’t make a sound
\nmind was going lickety-split praying
\nfor help and in my head i heard
\n“he will stop when you scream”
\ni screamed
\nhe stopped
\nand i wonder and i wonder
\nif i could have allowed my body to completely collapse
\nand would he pick me up and cry
\nand
\nthen could i hug him for the first and only time
\nin those hard days of depression
\nwhen he built his own house
\nwith a loan from a bank then
\nlost his job
\nlost his house in which had lived
\na mother, a father and three little girls
\nand me on the way, or at least, next…
\nhis hard labor WPA considered charity
\nmother felt the shame of the better-off<\/p>\n
next chapter
\nearning a living day time
\nbuilding a house night time
\n7 acres
\neventually electricity
\nalways an outhouse<\/p>\n
last chapter
\nand the blessings keep coming
\neven in my sleep-dream
\na male was in charge
\nof several men and women
\nand when he ordered me to do something
\nhe had no right to demand
\ni refused and sat on the floor
\nhe had a leather whip in his hand
\nwhich he whipped and whipped
\nbut did not touch
\nwe both knew the rule
\n“no corporal punishment”
\nit was not pleasure, but satisfaction i knew
\nlooking into his eyes and seeing frustration
\nlooking at his curved mouth
\nwith dogged determination
\nhe knew signified nothing.<\/p>\n
coda
\nthanks and praises
\nmother and father
\nwho art in Heaven
\nyour strength
\nfollowed me thru the valley
\nto near the end of this path
\nwhere the dear and dearer play
\nwhere never is heard
\na discouraging word
\nand smiles
\nthe dress of the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{..} in my dreams and after the fact of my six year old self running in circles around my father holding my right hand with his left left hand switching blow after blow on my growing welted legs deathly afraid i couldn’t make a sound mind was going lickety-split praying for help and in my … Continue reading “who would whip into submission?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}