Day Two #NaPoWriMo2019 Poem One

By Alex McGehee

“Daddy!” I cried out. Two syllables. Give him more time to hear,

To get up. “Daddy!” The word my mother tells him not to go to.

“Mommy!” I call the devil instead, God isn’t listening today, his fallen angel has his ear.

No help comes.

I bang my head on the red bar above my bed to bring myself to sleep.

I’m six, with Autism, and I can’t sleep with all the light and noise and hunger and pain.

I listen to my parents, laughing and happy

In their private world of adult time,

The dolls in bed, packed back in their boxes.

I will not rise before seven am in fear of breaking curfew.