Bloody love

I opened the email. I read. It caused a memory that nearly paralyzed me.

“AM I RIGHT OR WRONG!?”

He screamed at my mother, squeezing his hands around her throat.

Before he blackened her eye blue, before her face swelled, before she surrendered to be beaten, he demanded an answer.

She never answered.

And I couldn’t reply.

I remembered how he repeatedly stabbed her in the chest, as my sisters watched, and left her lying in a puddle of blood. When I heard that he was dead I locked myself in the bathroom and cried. He was the only father I knew. And oddly enough I loved him.

And because of love, I replied to her e-mail.