Don't Throw Me in an Arc

...
Don't throw me in an arc, like a sea anemone stretching out its arm, its tentacle, to reach a bit of flotsam or jetsam in the rocking, glassy green tidal water, on its slate rock, gripping. Don't throw me up and out over the sea water, big sea waves reaching even above your own waist, threatening my little girl self's feet grabbing for purchase, unwanted screams leaving my throat. Don't take me out past the waves even though you saved kids from drowning and were declared a hero and here your feet stand firmly on the underwater sand.

Don't throw me up, up from the lawn, solid and kelly green. Don't throw me up with your strong arms, strong enough to throw, but possibly not to catch. Up, too high above the manicured lawn ringed by roses and dark clean earth, no grassy weeds hiding the smooth clay. Up, too near the sun.

And please don't throw me up from your shoulders, your strong, warm, hands reaching fingers around my middle, grabbing my waist over my little girls' one piece suit. Lifting me into the clear reflecting aquamarine air while pool waves lap, me dripping with sparkly tears slurping down my sides. No, not up above the tiled hillside pool, high enough to know distant neighbors are doing only God knows in their yards. Don't throw me up above our pool. I'll scratch out my thin arms. Don't toss me up where my tummy tightens, my back goes rigid and my legs churn like sticks..

Do not grab me and throw me onto the mattress. That soft mattress on springy springs, soft enough to catch me with little bounces. The bed where I sleep worried, waking so often I don't know I'm not sleeping. Waking in such velvet dark it could be back stage behind a heavy curtain waiting for the play to start. Don't toss me, my stomach acid with terror, fear for the fall.

The child me often wakes to find myself lost on that bed. The headboad, in the pitch dark, lies away where my hands can't reach. I flail like the girl Patty Duke as the girl Helen Keller for the headboard now seemingly gone. I turn to the footboard, low, patting hands on the bedspread reaching for direction, now truly lost and fearful of a thump onto the cold floor, I sit frozen calling for my mom.

I'm unseeing, but creeping down the hall, not knowing I had slept. I call, "Mom." and open the ajar door, eyes focusing on the mother pushing back the covers. My mother lifts up her wolf face, a monster face that did not relate to the family canid I later grew to know. A face that stays glimmering in the night, fading as I wake, sitting, again on my bed in the dark, lost on my own bed, reaching for the edge, shaking, fearful of falling off into what?

Please, don't ever throw me onto the bed.
...
....