Vampire bites littered<\/p>\n
My little bothers forearms,<\/p>\n
Exposing his lifelines.<\/p>\n
Crouched to the ground, he cried,<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t look at me, Sister. I am not your bother anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This led him to place a gun to his head,<\/p>\n
Red and blue flashes raced to his aide.<\/p>\n
Only to see the villain in his laugh<\/p>\n
As they cuffed him and took him to jail.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was only a joke.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This is where<\/p>\n
Bottles of false hopes<\/p>\n
Gave my dad a kaleidoscope vision of life:<\/p>\n
Dizzying him to drink more, to blackout<\/p>\n
As he veered to a sign and walk away unscathed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When I pulled on his over-stretched shirt<\/p>\n
Pleading him to come back<\/p>\n
To come back to us.<\/p>\n
Because a rundown trailer with vacant fridges<\/p>\n
And dust-laden cabinets is all we had.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cDad, can you hear me?\u201d<\/p>\n
Only silence answered.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Cut to my mom,<\/p>\n
Falling to her knees as<\/p>\n
Rives flowed from her eyes,<\/p>\n
Followed by stuttered apologies<\/p>\n
And a pause of realization<\/p>\n
That her life was over:<\/p>\n
She had lost her marriage and us, her kids.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Nothing was worse than that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so sorry. It was all a misunderstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But to be called a liar by her<\/p>\n
is like a silver bullet to a werewolf,<\/p>\n
.<\/p>\n
Iraq was his tour and he was to serve again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI swear I miss Dustin too!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLiar! You\u2019re just copying me!\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I cried for my big brother to save me that night.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Past a decade ago,<\/p>\n
My world of Lisa Frank stickers and folders<\/p>\n
was shattered by a boy of platinum hair,<\/p>\n
ice water eyes, parchment-colored skin.<\/p>\n
He walked up and stole my smile,<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re ugly. Your skin is the color of mud and you don\u2019t belong here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speechless. Collapsing into a fit of tears. No one defended me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vampire bites littered My little bothers forearms, Exposing his lifelines. Crouched to the ground, he cried, \u201cDon\u2019t look at me, Sister. I am not your bother anymore.\u201d This led him to place a gun to his head, Red and blue flashes raced to his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3277,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3277"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124050,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124049\/revisions\/124050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}