An apology, or justification, for my leaving that home; or, the boys still inside

A torch passed down, of housekeeper, parent, protector of the remnants of youth, with bottles scattered at your feet and stifled guilt, you left one day back in April, not telling me it would be your last time in that home.

When it’s my time to do the same, I didn’t know it would be my last in that paint chipped kitchen

but after a 4 am call, a threat, a slap across the face, the jar against my scalp, his eyes in the dark

I knew, it was my time to go.

The boys still inside, not knowing much life before the smell of propane and littered indifference.

The next time we were all in a room together

a clinical space of sofa and prescribed stale empathy.

He severed more than my will to rely, he unraveled, with his careless compulsions, my connection with kin, 

the strongest unit of love I had known, I called out “brother”

but through those dark nights of barricade and speaking in code,

I had to give up the ghost,

and now I just ask for forgiveness as I pick my skin.