C.E. Phillippi

The frost has begun to pull back from the edges of the window; it leaves behind gray streaks that look like tears on the glass. From here (my place in the corner of the frame), I can see the spot where the peonies used to grow before the soil turned sour. They were my mother’s favorite. She used to say that even in Alaska, beauty just takes a little more work to keep alive.

The silence in this house is not a natural thing. It is a heavy, suffocating blanket that he laid over us the night the shouting finally stopped. I remember the weight of his footsteps (the slow, rhythmic thud of leather on wood) as he moved toward the boys’ room. My brother was so small; he still smelled like pine needles and laundry soap. He didn’t understand that the man who sat at our table was the same one who would eventually steal the air from his lungs.

Sometimes I hear him in the hallways. It is a soft, frantic patter of feet that ends abruptly at the top of the stairs. He is still running from him. He are still trying to find a corner where his shadow cannot reach.

Mother went last. I think she stayed long enough to make sure I was on the other side before she let go. I saw her face in the reflection of the blackened kitchen window that night; her eyes were wide and filled with a grief so deep it felt like the frozen depths of the Kenai. She didn’t fight for herself; she fought because the world had become a place where her children could no longer breathe.

He still walks these floors, though he doesn’t know I am watching. He thinks he cleaned the house, but you can never truly scrub away the coldness of a heart like his. I stay in my blue dress (the one with the lace he hated because it was too bright) and I wait. I watch the light move. I watch the dust settle. And I wait for the day the house finally decides it has had enough of his breath.