She Couldn't Know

To her innocent eyes, he was merely a man. One who brought stuffed animals home from the zoo and placed in her eager hands, one who took her to foreign places, new and interesting. To her, he had the world at his fingertips and she had dreams in her heart.

No one told her that when she rested in bed, he was someone else entirely. How could she know that he was the reason for bruises on her mother’s arms, that he was the one who made her walk through the house like she was so afraid?

If she could have known his other side, when her mother asked if she liked the man, she would have said ‘no’. She would have kicked him out and hope to never see his face again, but she didn’t know that years from then, she would hold her mother in her arms and whisper as she wept to her, that she would lay with her at night to keep away the nightmares. She couldn’t have known. To her innocent eyes, he was merely a man. One who taught her about the evils of the world and stole her trust and placed it somewhere far away next to her mother’s broken heart.