To Never Staying Young - Poem

I never knew why he needed such a big bed

but now I know

that no other bed was big enough

to contain his

monstrous ego.         

He drank nearly as much as a fish that night,

slurping aged whiskey from a crystal decanter

and choking us

with tar-laced fumes.

I don’t know what he said to you

in that gigantic room

with the mahogany dresser and the bone comb set,

because all I heard was muffled voices

and the crash of glass on concrete.

Such loutish, unruly sounds.

I know you cried that night

when you thought you were alone.

But I was there

waiting in the darkness,

holding back my tears

Your eyes had always scared the monsters from under my bed

but you couldn’t keep them from your own.

And I grew up in that moment

because my world grew dark

in the absence of your light.