Virtues on tape

When I was young:
My mother would hold a butcher knife
And cast her shadow down
The dimly lit hallways
(So she could find the medicine cabinet)
I would pray to nothing
For salvation and rewind the storybook tape
Over and over-
Virtues and more virtues
Shallow and callow though they where:
I listened
And I learned
And I prayed.
Still mother’s shadow stuck in freeze frame
Clutching that forsaken knife
Promising death
For an ill-spoken phrase:
“I hate-
This life,
My father (?),
This night,
This education,
You.”
Learning day by day
And night by night
That words couldn’t be
just words
If I spoke them with anger
Or fear.
My fingers reaching for the rewind button-
Dimly illuminated by the blinking electrics
Of my bedside alarm clock
The same ancient fable twangs and restarts:
I listened
And I learned
And I prayed:
“Deliver me, oh nothing-
deliver me”