Liminality in Six Parts
II. My father, merely a myth of a man, sits perched on the edge of the porch step, eyes glazed and hovering over a smile stretched thin, like a mistake, like a scar aware of its unbecoming. See, in my home, my father is a ghost, a specter rarely sighted. Sometimes the haunting scars the most obscenely.
III. Neatly-patched holes litter my mother’s body, but you’d never know it; a lady doesn’t ache and tell. But watch—the fog, the fury, the desperation of it all. Her work comes apart at the seams, and her hands are already full.
IV. Have you ever felt an earthquake at its epicenter? Not the rumbling of distant thunder, but the jolting awareness that the violence is already beneath you.
V. At seventeen, I watch my sleep cycles in reverse, retrace my steps back to the beginning, wait patiently for the dreams to dissipate. Here, in this limitless hallway lined with faceless family portraits, I am untouchable.
VI. I guess the half-rotted girl doesn’t fall far from the half-rotted tree.
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Brooke Tapia is pursuing a General Associates of Arts and plans to pursue a Baccalaureate of Arts in English and a minor in Creative Writing.