<\/p>\n
I climbed out of bed and fumbled through the hallway to the bathroom,<\/p>\n
rubbing my sleepy eyes with my tiny fists, even though Momma had told me not to.<\/p>\n
I lifted the lid and lowered my Strawberry Shortcake Underoos to my ankles,<\/p>\n
grabbing hold of the sink to help hoist my not-quite-three-year-old booty up on the potty.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As the golden stream started to ebb and flow, curiosity got the best of me,<\/p>\n
as it so often does with children. I opened my eyes and looked in the bathtub to my right,<\/p>\n
and screamed like the little girl that I was!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There was a dead man in my bathtub!!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Fully dressed in a plaid western shirt and faded jeans, he lay semi-sprawled about the tub,<\/p>\n
his arms and legs dangling freely over the porcelain edges, head tilted back against the faucet,<\/p>\n
eyes closed tight, mouth half open though no sound came out.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Momma rushed in and shook him back to life. Turns out, Clifton wasn’t dead,<\/p>\n
only drunk.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Identical twin boys plagued Mrs. McCurdy, my kindergarten teacher.<\/p>\n
Danny and Donny Barlow.<\/p>\n
The school saw fit to separate them, leaving Danny in the morning class,<\/p>\n
while Donny attended afternoons with us. Soon, he was my boyfriend.<\/p>\n
We stole a kiss under the table when we thought no one could see us.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Summer passed, and another fall. Rain flooded the streets of our hometown,<\/p>\n
leaving drainage ditches to look like swimming pools. Danny dove in…<\/p>\n
and never came out.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Holding Momma’s hand as we stood at his gravesite, I wondered why I wasn’t crying<\/p>\n
like everyone else around me. I overheard my mother talking to Ms. Barlow and learned the twins’<\/p>\n
little brother Billy had been hit by a Mack truck and broken his little leg. Spotting a familiar face,<\/p>\n
I turned loose of Momma’s grip and wandered across the grass where Mrs. McCurdy stood.<\/p>\n
I noticed her eyes were dry like mine. She smiled down at me and hugged my neck.<\/p>\n
“It’s okay not to cry,” she said softly, squeezing my hand as she answered my unasked question.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Momma always told us stories of what a wonderful woman Edna Earl, our great-Grandma Burden was.<\/p>\n
But the woman we knew growing up was different. Stricken by dementia and confused and often angry,<\/p>\n
we only saw the cranky grouchy side of her. She didn’t like it when we were loud, or had friends over.<\/p>\n
Little girls weren’t supposed to play with little boys. We were supposed to be seen but not heard whenever our great-grandmother was awake. Saturday nights at 7pm were meant for Gunsmoke.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I remember Momma crying on the phone with Granny. I was ten, my baby sister was eight. Dad told Momma to do what she had to do. He dropped her off at the hospital while we waited in the car.<\/p>\n
Then he drove us across town to Putt-Putt. We dumped roll after roll of quarters into Rampage as the three of us sat there playing Godzilla, King Kong, and a third mega monster I can’t recall, bouncing from city to cartoon city, smashing skyscrapers and helicopters and anything else in our paths.<\/p>\n
Edna Earl was called home that night, but all I remember are screen shots of animated wreckage Dad and Rachel and I had left behind.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(This poem was inspired by prompt for hour 23, to create a poem about your childhood in one to five numbered parts.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Childhood, In Three Pieces ONE I climbed out of bed and fumbled through the hallway to the bathroom, rubbing my sleepy eyes with my tiny fists, even though Momma had told me not to. I lifted the lid and lowered my Strawberry Shortcake Underoos…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1212,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13,1136,441],"tags":[3374,684,51,364,273,3373],"class_list":["post-56992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-miscellaneous","category-official-marathon-prompts","category-poetry-prompt-responses","tag-barlow","tag-childhood","tag-death","tag-drowning","tag-hour-23","tag-rampage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56992","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\/1212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56992"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57836,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56992\/revisions\/57836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}