the uprising of Simone Johnson (ch. 1) REVISED

Deep in the fiery pits of hell1

lives not only the sinners,2

robbers, rapist, murderers,3

not only do the soul4

of the wrongful rest5

their head upon the pillow6

of eternal flames7

somewhere engulfed in pain8

is a lost and misguided soul9

and they spend every second10

trying to overcome that11

bottomless pit12

only to be taunted13

by the laughter of demons.14

************15

He panted quietly still as he lay next to me, breath smelling sour of liquor. It had become just another thing to me, him coming into my bed, just seemed like another adversity that I was subjected to face along with living in a ratty apartment on the other side of the tracks, hungry and not even knowing when my momma would be back from the grocery store or if she’d be back.16

Coloring neatly in a coloring book on the floor as Daddy slept naked and contently in my bed I realized that she’d never come back. Why would she come back to this roach hole? To a man who beat her on the regular? & an ugly daughter she didn’t even want who was dead stupid? 17

I was six years old, a very innocent six years old, having never spent a day at school, having no knowledge of how the real world worked decided to leave that smelly apartment where my drunk father slept. I was determined to find my mother, but having nowhere to look I realize now that it was some desperate and lame attempt to escape the tormenting life I could have lived in the prison cell Daddy built for me.18

He boldly told me that I was his special woman because Momma would be gone for a long time. It sounded fun, but I had no idea what being his special woman meant I found out though it was fulfilling what he said the needs that every man needs fulfilled. 19

I left through the front door and did the only thing I knew possible to get far away from my father’s grip get on the bus and ride an hour across town to an even rougher neighborhood. It wreaked of poverty it sounded like the constant echo of a siren and there was no place fit for a little girl like me. I forced myself to fit, sitting gleefully on a curb in front of a dark alley where maybe a dozen whores were pulling tricks and turning to the corner you could see the dope boys waiting with full pockets for their next customer. 20

I fell asleep on that very same curb with all the sound and festivities going all around me. I slept like the baby I was only awakening with the sweet sound of a woman’s voice.21

I opened my little itty bitty eyes to two women in high heels and short skirts. They held out their hand like any sane woman would seeing a pretty little girl sleeping in the street, especially being the type of woman who woke up themselves at times in the gutters. I didn’t take it, having had don’t talk to strangers beat in my head with a belt by my daddy. 22

“Are you waiting for your mommy?” one with weave down to her thighs asks me, thinking possibly that she’s off somewhere tricking, snorting, or smoking. 23

I looked up to them with this abundance on raw innocent truth and told them plainly, “My mommy doesn’t want me. She left.”24

I had never thought that thought, so those words came out and more then anything I wanted to take them back, thinking that if speaking them would make them true. I still wish I’d never said it, but what else could I think.25


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