Tonight's Poet Corner: The Fight

The Fight
by Belinda Roddie

"Go to your room," my mother told me,
her eyes swollen and black and blue.
"He'll be back home any minute,
and I don't want him to hurt you, too."

I scrambled my way to my bedroom
and blocked the door with my chair,
splinters scraping against splinters
as I knelt there, remembering
my pearl rosary, and
how to recite my prayers.

He didn't come home that night,
or the next night, or the next.
They found him dead on the side
of the road, asphyxiated on the vomit
left in his drunken throat. And I
had no regrets.