Step-Monster

The dying of a youth's spirit for the step-parent's callousness.

His bellowing laughter cut me
to the minuscular size
of a lone blade of grass
amidst the backyard's fallow.

He smelled the seething
of contemptuous innocence,
and he laughed all the harder,
slapping his leg.

Family filled the backyard;
they were my family, not his.
He was just an add-on
with a hateful soul.

Those enchanting pink tulips
that grew beneath my window
wilted under his acid tongue.
They died with my spirit.

Turning eighteen was the
greatest event of my life.

18 Lines.