Vivid Memories from the Night he Left me

The door slammed, the house shook, and my tears fell hot: he was gone forever. I had heard them screaming for hours, the tender flesh of my ear pressed hard against the steel heating grate on the floor. I can still remember how cold that steel felt against my flushed skin.

He came home drunk, not unusual for him even at this early hour of the afternoon. My mom was sitting, waiting at the kitchen table, with silent tears of anger and betrayal coursing down her face. As the faded and peeling front door slowly opened, she told my siblings and I to go upstairs; my sister sobbed on our bed, my brother slammed his door, and I was simply just confused.

The shouting began soon after we left; I heard her yell and then him yelling louder. The louder they would scream the harder my sister would sob, I soon began crying just because I had no idea what was going on. My mother talked of chances, and how he’d run out of them. My father pleaded with slurred speech about how he could change, but my mother, she knew something terrible. Something even he could not change; something that would tear our family apart with unrelenting fury.

My father left then, he simply slammed the door and I knew that he would not be back. My heart shattered, my soul cracked, and a piece of me died when I heard that door slam. My father left and he didn’t take me with him, what had I done to cause him to stop loving me? Why did my best friend leave me all alone?