Poem by Ada Den Hollander

At the light of the bright full moon

the little girl is reading her book

on her lap in her bedroom upstairs.

She sits on her chair, she has covered her ears

blocking out her father’s drunken shouts

her mother’s screams

the breaking of glass

in the living room downstairs.

The words in her book are simple, the sentences short,

the pictures from another world, her world.

She nods off, the book falls from her lap

which wakes her up and with

her hands no longer covering her ears

she listens to the eery silence from

the room downstairs.

Shivering now, with tears in her eyes and fearful

she climbs into her bed and before she falls asleep

she looks up at the light of the bright full moon

hoping it was just a bad dream.

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