Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

Just Like the Buffalo

I don’t ever want to come back to this house again.
This $985,000 house
with the white death walls
and the real estate salespeople
telling me how great it must have been to grow up here.
If walls could talk,
they would be screaming.
The knock down fights.
The fucked up birthdays and Christmases.
The empty swing in the backyard.
The lonely girl sitting on the diving board
wondering why
she wanted to die when she was just seven years old.
Marble doesn’t make a fall any softer.
Neither does Karastan carpet.
My mother sitting in that chair
talking,
always talking
and always saying nothing.
How I hate her.
I don’t even care how that sounds anymore
I hate her.
I swear to God I do.
This morning when I was chopping carrots
with a knife and she came into the room
I thought about it.
I thought about turning around with the knife
and stabbing her.
I understood how people could go crazy
in an instant.
How one person could drive them over the edge.
She just kept talking and talking
and she wouldn’t stop.
She just wouldn’t stop.
This house,
this $985,000 house
should have had such happy memories.
It should have been filled with laughter
and stories I could grow up with
and tell my own children.
But there is nothing here.
It is as empty as my father’s closet.
He too was driven out
just like the buffalo.