Pages

Saturday, April 2, 2016

When I Was Ten

Black as the night that ruled my day,
a habitually mean scare-crow nun
tortured my tenth year by terrorizing
my fifth grade nights and days
heart-stopping in the recurring nightmares.

The single ray of light that year
occurred when I was released
to take piano lessons. Her retribution
took form in winds of hate that
directed manic strikes with a hickory stick.
It shred my hands and arms, at any
time almost always for imagined
infractions of some unspecified law.

No recourse, no mercy, and no understanding
and now I feel the same for that institution
that preaches love and practices hate.

© Gay Reiser Cannon * 4.1.16 * All Rights Reserved

2 comments:

  1. You and I might have been on the same wave length today--

    ReplyDelete
  2. This was written before I saw SPOTLIGHT last week. The statistics I took away from that film are horrific.

    ReplyDelete