Poet Tre Wharton used his talent to cope with CDV by expressing in verse what living with his stepfather’s violence was like. This poem is just one of about forty poems he wrote about CDV in his new book Grown Folk Business.
A Daughter’s Perspective
The door shuts
Like the eyes of the giant
That torment her sleep.
She listens anxiously as his steps
Fade down the tenement hallway.
Never before has she felt
This exhausted.
Never again will she feel
this relieved.
Mama don’t you worry, she says,
as she barges into her mother’s bedroom,
He’s gone for good this time.
Yeah, I know, Mama says,
As the tears run down her face
Into the tenement hallway.