This document describes traumatic childhood memories and experiences. It references being beaten by one's father in front of neighbors, feeling tormented by mahogany end tables and dangerous doors, and grandparents ensuring children behave and believe at funerals. Later images include yearning for help to cross over to the light from diminutive women, throwing tennis balls into closets and shrinking into mice to avoid being found out by adults.

1. ALICE
All this when you were a little dancer. The scent of you feral, overwhelming. My mother burns
my face with the iron, my corkscrew curls turned limp in fog. Our white pinafores gone green in
wet, sodden grass. That time my father lifted me by the leg, beating me in front of all the
neighbors. I am tormented by the sadness of mahogany end tables. Even the doors are
dangerous. At the funerals our grandmothers’ hands rest at the napes of our necks. Making sure
we behave. That we believe. Grandpa lets me sleep in their bed while Grandma wrings the house
of devils. The lamps lit low all night. The portraits of Jesus in slow yellow light.
ANASTASIA
These images I collect, hoping to feel. We still believe in haunted things that prey upon children.
Even the umbrellas make me sad. I yearn for diminutive women to help me cross over to the
light. Stand in shadows, pray for storms of pebbles. We throw ragged tennis balls into closets.
Shrink into mice so the adults won’t find out. But they’re too fevered to notice the stains on our
shoes. The crackling of my bones as I tumble down the staircase. Tin foil covers all the windows,
the winter months transparent as hungry mosquitoes. I crouch beneath the window, searching
for something grotesque. Wonderful. Like monsters. Like love.