Meant for bigger things

You know the old hurt. It’s not presumptuous for me to think you have them. I am not saying you were raised poorly, but maybe you were. I saw dark things for sure. Dark things that took root. I didn’t plant them, I was just a child. They went on around me….
I would just be learning to braid hair on My Little Ponies alone in my room and it would be there ,down the hall. I stopped mid braid and put the the pink plastic horse next to the others all lined up at the side of my bed their tails all braided and twisty tied fast.Their sherbet smiles begging me back to childish things. I looked down at my legs splayed out to either side of me..and just like that I was done being proud of myself. I got up and walked down the hall. I paused at their door. I opened the door in a dumb kid kind of way but there was no dumb kid standing in the doorway, I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew if I kept playing with those horses and lining them up it would go on. By this one simple nonviolent act I would stop the violence and fear on the other side. And I did. He looked at me and zipped the long leather case and put it back in the tall safe. His jeans brushed by me as he rushed out of our house. I ran back to my room and got my library book on cats…she hated cats, but it was all I had. The pony army glanced up at me from their station, but I couldn’t be bothered. Book tucked under my arm I left them at their post again.
We sat in her bed and she read the book to me, her hair up high in a bun on her head…it always made her look mad, to me. All I could think was she must really be sad to read me a book on cats, because she hated cats.
We left for good shortly after that. What someone meant to hold us down and rob us of our powers only pushed us to better. I remember leaving and he stood there and cried.
And I laughed, I was five maybe six, and I laughed.
He hugged my sister and me and we laughed in his ear as his tears dripped on our shoulders.
He looked ridiculous crying there in the foyer.
The cycle was over and we moved out of it and forward, never to redo it in our own lives.
We had somewhere to go , not everyone does.
T.