𝐃𝐄𝐏𝐑𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐃

2

HER PREY

I'm actually really poetic...if you take the time out to know me. Nobody knows me, nobody actually takes time out for me...so, nobody knows that I'm poetic.

I'm a poet Mom, I'm a poet Dad.

No.

I'm just a quiet girl who can't get nothin' right. No snaps for me, no lukewarm, homemade tea or coffee in a little mom and pop type of setting. Only soured milk because that man...that man she made my father wants to slurp on fermented piss all day instead of getting us proper groceries.

That's no man, is it?

My hair's dry, curled and cremed into a collage of twists, small and medium, for my hairstyle whenever my sly tendrils can be freed. Whenever I can get away and escape this lonely, lonely...home?

My small notebook, barely bigger than my hands, with bad scribbles I call handwriting and sad expressions drawn into wonky circles on old paper...sits on the bed before me.

Poems about my distress, about my limited eustress, about my pain. About a future I wish that I had for myself. Indecision and agony- stay here at home or brave running away. Be another teenage statistic.

Be dead.

Or...just...be?

"Casei!"

My body jerked up out of the slumped position I was in against my headboard, making me slam my back against the hard wood. "Y-Yes?" I slowed my heart down, throwing my notebook under my covers and peeking my head out into the hallway. "Yes ma'am?"

"I need you out the house tomorrow. Something's big come up for your Daddy," she said, a thick blanket wrapped around her sweaty body, "He might have a job. We might be able to get outta this hell hole," she added. "But in order for that to work, we need two incomes."

"His interview's comin' here, Mom?" I asked curiously.

"A work at home type of job," she waved her hand around nonchalantly, "I don't really care for the details. They just have to come here and see if he's fit for the position and also see what type of set up he'd need here. If he needs a computer, speaker, the works," she explained. "If he needs a desk, that stuff."

Sometimes when she explains things to me in detail, I feel like she actually cares if I understand anything.

"So, you'll be workin' for them too?" I asked, holding my door open and staring at her. That's what she meant by two incomes, right?

"No. I'll be gettin' ready for the baby," a silly smile came onto her face. "You'll need to find a job. You're old enough to pay for your things now. Pads and things like that, I can't afford. I'll be buying diapers from now on and gettin' these tubes tied, for sure."

I pray it's not a girl. Another one shouldn't have to suffer at the hands of this woman-

"By Friday, preferably. Once your father gets this job," the person in question came up behind her, running his nose along her neck, breathing his funky ass breath on her, "this family should move forward all-together. You have a job, he has a job, and I'm caring for little one here," she rubbed her stomach through the blanket as he embraced her from behind.

"Yeah, I'll be able to care for you more than ever now," my dad slapped her ass, making my mom emit a girlish giggle. "Cole Johnston," she warned, "You are such a flirt!" She said something real quick in her language before heading back into the bedroom with him.