Childhood Home (Warning: Abuse)

[3zu]

Muddy footprints etched into the cherry hardwood,
Voices echo off the walls, filling the room.
An empty table with bodiless seats stands forgotten.
Parasitic love soaks into the walls.
Handprints magnify to a deep crimson.
Forever imprinted into the skin
Of a frail woman living for her child.

Voices become louder,
a terrifying crescendo of human hatred,
feeding off the absence of marital love.

Pieces of a broken bottle litter the wooden strips.
Blood paints smooth black and white marble
of an artificial bathroom sink,
Scattered shards of glass mirror the truth
like whispered apologies at night
shaded a repugnant yellow.
Tears carve patterns in the worn skin.

A hastily packed suitcase waits by the door.
A child’s miniscule hand grasps tightly to
the cracked fingers of his mothers’.

You at least have to get your feet underneath you before your reach can exceed your grasp. Abuse is not so much a "Big" subject as a deep one. It takes control & experience to even begin to approach it. Many named & unnamed writers have failed to avoid sentimentality in trying to express the horror - abuse eats sentimentality as a between meal snack. There are certain lines here that hint you possess power of expression - I am not going to list them because you are intelligent & know which ones they are.
Lay hold on your power of expression and leave off everything else - you are not a chef creating a meal, you are a poet dealing with realities of truth. There is a difference.