“Sleep, my darling. Dream happy dreams. You are the only one who has ever touched my heart. It will always be yours sleep, my only love…” I sang to myself, something my mother would have always done before kissing me goodnight.

I slowly rocked myself back and forth. Listening to the subtle creaking the old swing made as I slowly pushed myself. I tried distracting myself from what had happened earlier in the day.

It was the second weekend of the month-the time I usually spent with my father. Jacob never took care of me, when my mother died he started drinking, he was never the same, it was almost like he needed her to function like without her nothing else mattered. Charlie thought it was safer for me to stay away from him. He didn’t want Jacob to hurt himself or me. But even when my father did come to visit it always felt awkward I felt like he didn’t care about me as if he hated me. But this time it was different.

I was use to him yelling at me for no reason at all, and sometimes being weirdly nice- again for no reason. However, today Jacob hit me. It came so suddenly out of no where. It wasn’t like it hurt physically, but more emotionally, the fact that my own father had hit me.

I looked up at the sky, as I saw the dark clouds forming; I knew that I’d better get home before Charlie got worried. While I was walking through the spitting rain I started thinking about my mother, and how I never could remember what she looked like I could only remember her tender voice singing me to bed at night- once she thought I was asleep she would slowly creep out of my room amazingly making no noise on the old wooden floors. But after she had left me she would lock herself in the bathroom, that’s where she’d cry for hours at a time and show my father how she really felt about everything in her life-her marriage, the house we all lived in, the job she worked at–and me? But there was also someone else she cried for…

The roar of thunder brought my attention back to earth- where I slowly trudged along trying to avoid the now thunderous rain storm. I realised I must have looked odd standing in the middle of the road soaking wet.