Have You Ever (Day 430)

Have you ever come home exhausted from a trip 

to the grocery store right before Thanksgiving, 

having fought crowds of last-minute shoppers 

and carried in bag after bag of ingredients for

the feast—and dropped the bag of flour you just

bought to make pie crusts? The whoompf when 

it lands, the explosion of powder that covers 

everything and hangs in the air for hours so, 
as soon as you finish cleaning, every surface is 
once more covered in a white film that turns to 
glue when it comes in contact with water...?

You are that everlasting cloud.

Have you ever stumbled into the kitchen to make 

coffee at some ungodly hour, barely able to see, 

only to find a damp mass of yesterday’s grounds 

fermenting in the brewing basket? Wrinkling your 

nose at the oddly ashtray-like odor as you upend 

the filter into the trash, you manage to miss the bag 

entirely. Fine grains of wet coffee scatter, bead-like,

onto your bare feet and the kitchen floor, finding 

the most arbitrary and unreachable hiding spots, 

and crunching underfoot for days...?

You are those day-old grounds.

Have you ever invited a friend to dinner at your 
new home, freshly decorated in airy shades of cream 
and white, shown him to your favorite Italian-leather 
chair, handed him a glass of pinot noir, and watched 
in horror as he spilled it? He offered to pay all of the 
cleaning bills, but you graciously refused and, when 
he returned for another soirée, he exclaimed about 
how everything looked as good as new! (Because, you 
did not say, it is.). Once again, he relaxed into his seat, 
and once more his blood-red wine landed with a 
sickening splat on your white wool carpet, thin purple 
veins trickling down the buttery sides of your chair.
Have you gritted your teeth, reassured him, replaced 
your chair and carpet again—and then invited that 
same careless friend back to your pristine home for 
another evening of wine and cheese? No?

Well, my friend, neither have I. 

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: roegger/Pixabay

Her Place in the World (Day 293)

She is small, 

barely tall enough 

to reach 

the first swinging hoop 

from the little metal platform 

welded onto the jungle gym. 

So, when the big 
blond-haired boy 
with the raspy voice 

taunted her, 

she froze. 

And when he shoved her 

out of line and 

she landed hard 

on the concrete, 

she remained silent, 

and the other children 

did nothing, 

their eyes averted 

in fear and shame 

and the mild disgust 

the world feels for victims. 

Later, she recounted the story 

while her mother and 

grandmother cooked dinner. 

When she showed them 

her scraped elbow, 

her mother said: 

"What did you do 

to make him shove you?" 

Her grandmother added: 

"He sounds like 

a very sad little boy. 

You should pray for him." 

That day she learned 

about her place 

in the world, 

about what she could 

expect, and what she 

should tolerate. 

So, when her husband 

screamed at her for buying 
creamy peanut butter 

instead of crunchy, 

she found herself 

thinking how sorry 

he must be, and that

she needed to pray 

for him.

Intimate-partner violence (IPV), or domestic violence (DV), affects all of us in some way. 

For example: mass shootings significantly impacted children: 25 percent of mass shooting fatalities (211) were children. This is primarily driven by mass shootings related to domestic or family violence, in which over 40 percent of fatalities were children. (EverytownResearch.org)

 For a wealth of information about IPV/DV, or to seek *confidential* help, please visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline website, or call the Hotline at 1-800-799-7233

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: Andreas160578