Forty-Nine Percent

The feelings in the poem resurfaced yesterday/today, so I figured it was appropriate. I need to do some revising on it, but here's the original version.

Note: My mother is currently in the middle of a nightmare of a divorce. The "you" in this is my three little brothers ( ages 8, 11, 13) who still live at home and have to deal with it.


Forty-Nine Percent

What would you think if I kidnapped
you? If we left your Mom and
your Dad in Missouri and disappeared
together. I look at the scene

that I have left you in, the scene
our parents have written: you’re
all characters in a Shakespearean tragedy
waiting for the inevitable ending—bodies
strewn across a wooden stage. The guilt

I feel for leaving you there lingers
around me like the cold of winter
at the end of February. When the joy
of snow is gone and all you’re left
with is that fucking bitter wind that bites

flesh off your uncovered face. The only
solution I can see is taking you away
before the curtain falls. Before
they have completely forgotten that it is you

they should be fighting for. You. And not
the destruction of one another. Together
we can leave. We can say “Fuck you!”
to your father: the man who makes

us all feel like we are fish in a tank
full of algae, slowly suffocating
in filth. When you come home

from school I will be waiting
to see your tissue paper butterflies,
to kiss your proud smiles and hold

your small exploring hands. Your father
will not be there with his finger pointed
like a sword, ready to poke through

the innocent insect and say
“Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz! Pop!”
and pronounce your beautiful creation
dead at the scene.
"Fuck you!” to trips to overnight camp

ending with Mom calling the cops
and them meeting her at Quick
Trip where your dad will drop you
off, because he picked you up without

permission and Mom is scared that one day
he really will kidnap you; because forty-nine
percent of kidnappings are committed

by family members of the victims:
mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers,
aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, brothers,

or sisters,

and she's worried he will be the one
to finally take you away, so far she won’t
ever see you again. “Fuck you!”

to the goddamn United States legal
system who listens to every lie
that comes out of his mouth, just because

he is a goddamn Major in the fucking
United States Army. They want to believe
that he is good and honorable and that you

will be safe with him. Because the world
needs heroes and he wears the uniform
that ignorant Americans praise. They would
rather bow down to him and his ridged

rules and regulations then think about
love and commitment. They don’t see
you cry at night, wishing
any of this made sense. Wishing

that you didn’t have to question
if he loves you, if he’ll be there next
week, if he’ll make you feel like
running away, like cutting your wrist.

Wishing that he was still the arms
you remember from years ago. Arms
that held warmth.

What would you say? If I kidnapped
you? What would you think if you knew
I wanted to take you away
and never had the courage?