At eight or nine, I did laps around
the kerosene heater, a girl running
a one-woman race on brown shag
carpet. Screaming, while Mother
sat in her chair calm, I was lonely,
wanted to be noticed.
My chest tightened as I ran more
and more laps, my body leaning hard
in the tight web I’d woven. I asked myself
Is this what it feels to be insane?
Running to something or away,
my undeveloped brain couldn’t answer,
so when she only watched, not moving
from her worn LazyBoy, I chased
my beloved pet Cockatiel Mickey
with a wooden dowel, the base
of a handheld flag—pursued him, striking
the couch near him, the cushion
indented. To the lamp shade he flew.
I struck again, shattering the shade’s plastic
accordion edge. I remember his chest rising
and falling, his top feather on end, his one eye large,
piercing me like a push pin. I was hurting
the one I loved best, scaring the one
who’d done nothing to me. I stopped.
My breaths slowed. The stick dropped.
Mother asked, “Do you feel better?”
as if she knew what I was feeling all along.
Slow to Anger
Jamey Temple is a writer and professor who teaches English at University of the Cumberlands in Eastern Kentucky. Her poetry and prose have been included in several publications such as River Teeth, Rattle, Appalachian Review, Literary Mama, Kentucky Monthly, and Still: The Journal. You can read more of her published work through her website (jameytemple.com).