The thirty-eight snub felt heavy

in my thirteen year old hands.

It was my father's gun. Fully loaded,

I found it in the hallway closet

next to his nine shot three-eighty.

His nine mill must've been

in the small of his back, just above

the blue flag in his left back pocket.

I wore a red one hanging from my right.

My father beat my mother often:

handling her like Ali tipping up

a bantam weight. That's why I chose

the other side. I wanted nothing to do

with anything that allowed my father

to belong. I hated him. Almost as much

as I loved and feared him.

He was my father. Not a man

to be trifled with.

My father stood six-foot two,

two-sixty. His body chiseled hard

over a six year penitentiary bid

lasting from my fourth to my tenth b-day.

He was a bitter man. Not like

the faint image that clung to

ancient memories hidden in dark

crevices that sometimes stirred

when he took me to play ball.

That father, too, still existed.

His intermittent reappearances

fed my hopes and my mother's prayers

that he would one day return.

Something happened to him in prison.

He came out CCO¹ and pushing

a hard line in the hood.

The money it brought was welcomed,

but the terror that came with it

had me wishing for a return to poverty:

the days before the dark six.

I turned the pistol over in the gloom,

a drop of light skittering along

its blue steel barrel. The trigger felt

tight as I examined my heart

for the courage to give into my rage.

My mother's mewling cries still

reached me, barely audible behind

her closed bedroom door. My father

was silent though. Sometimes, after

beating mother particularly brutally,

remorse would grip him like a python

seizing a meal.

I wouldn't have much longer. I knew

sherm had made father's moods

unpredictable, but indecision still gripped me

like a muscle spasm, my heart squeezed

by a crushing gauntlet. I looked up

and saw father's form filling

the open doorway; his gaze riveted

on the snub nose in my grip.

The gun pointed shakily at my father

as I watched the scene dispassionately.

It was almost like watching a video game;

3D graphics rendered in stunning detail

on my PS3. I could nearly see the beads

of sweat tentatively sprouting across my brow

as a sneer curled my father's lips.

He started forward and the snub ceased

its shake. Father noticed.

The report of the gun filled the tiny

space of the hallway, the sound of the snub

swallowed by the larger bark

of my father's nine. The pain I felt was

intense, so intense, the snub fell from my

grip as I stood watching my body in slo-mo

falling backwards; a blood blossom spreading

on my white Tommy shirt matched to one

on my father's Sean John. Painlessly, I stared

down the hallway where my father lay

knowing he'd never hit my mother again.