She never knew why. She didn’t know how. All those years, they just didn’t mean anything anymore. Her whole life; it just didn’t matter. All because of some stupid mistake a loved one made. She reflected on her whole life story, but never thought it would come to this.

Sitting on the stairs just outside her front door, Alice cried her eyes out because of what her father had done to her. Three years before, his anger had never surfaced and they lived happily in harmony.

Then, he started drinking again. His anger had escaladed more and more each time he did, and he loved the high and the buzz from it. The amount he would drink gradually increased to three bottles of beer a night and eventually to several shots of tequila. To put it lightly, Alice’s father was a nasty drunk.

Every night, he would go to a bar and come back totally trashed. Every time, he would pass out in the bedroom and never talk to Alice or her mother, who would always be trying to cover up her tears whenever Alice was around. Her mother was becoming a complete wreck and it was blatantly obvious.

The one night that left Alice crying on the stairs started when he came home drunk, as usual. Except this time, instead of walking into the bedroom, he went into the kitchen and started feeling up his wife.

“Stop it. You’re drunk. Just go to bed and sleep it off,” Alice’s mother said as she fought to get her husband off of her.

“Stupid bitch,” he muttered lazily as he slapped her across the face. Alice had walked in the room and tried to tend to her mother, but he pulled her away and the force made her crash hard into the counter. Alice collapsed to the floor and could hear her mother trying to defend her. Her father wouldn’t have it, though, so he kept hitting her mother over and over. Alice managed to crawl outside to the stairs without being noticed, and she sat there and cried for the rest of the night.

She wondered how her father could do something like that, when there wasn’t any obvious reason for him to be acting like that.

The eight-year-old girl sat there hoping her mother would be okay. In some ways, she still sits there hoping everything will be okay.

I hold my pillow late at night

To hide from the rain

Suffering because of someone else’s gain