After her father killed Fluffy,

her spindly, dusty gray stray kitten,

her token of love,

she brooded about his killing.

A sobering loop of his death replayed repeatedly

in wake/sleep moments.

The partial bloody halo encircling his smashed head,

blood droplets dripping down her short-sleeved coat.

Rusted shovel chopping painfully slow

hardened red clay soil

as she dug Fluffy's makeshift burial spot

straining her skinny arms.

Tears silently coating each imprinted moment.

Tears swallowed on that fatal day and every day since

under threat of an ass-whupping from Fluffy’s killer.

She ingested her pain.

She digested her sorrow.

No tears, cause big girls don’t weep aloud.

They mime wailing sobs.

Her father marched onward through his days

from a smashed cockroach,

to a smashed kitten,

to a smashed child.

As if nothing mattered.

As if nothing happened.

His retaliatory brutish anger

found a new resting place

in her.