Alongside the baby chickens

alongside the baby chickens
they flee
aware of the danger
the pain
the complicated emotions
he poisons the air they breathe
putas
ordering them to leave his land
the teenage girls vanish
abandoning her
she tries to fend him off
the drunken belligerent
love of her life

This is the story of my friend, a friend who recently was drawing and talking and in an instant, everything changed. This is the story of a friend who lives in a machista third-world country, without opportunities, possibilities, resources, or contacts. She has dreamt about leaving, but poverty doesn’t poke air holes for its prisoners. Seemingly, there’s no way to escape. All her life, she tells me, she has hoped for just one normal father-daughter conversation. She’s wished that maybe he would say something nice, something supportive, or something to show that he recognizes her presence. She tells me it’s not right to have to live with such violence, but when faced with the opportunity to make it end, she decided not to do to him what he has done to her. Instead, she lives with the back pain, the emotional anguish, and the thought that maybe things would be different if she had not been born.