Lost and Found
an excerpt

I was four at the time I began to contemplate one of life’s greatest mysteries -- do I like the colour blue or the colour red? As I sat rooted to the soft carpet floor and behind closed doors I pondered to myself, hoping that one of them would emerge triumphant as the victor, because I couldn’t have two favorites.

Something was stirring just outside my bedroom doors and I tried to take a peek at what was happening.

Outside my bedroom walls a war was raging and the fighting escalated as my parents’ voices echoed through every crevice of the house making the ground shake. The screams got louder as my parents believed that the louder they became, the stronger they would become. I shut the door, and scurried away back to my own little world; clasped my hands over my ears in hope that I could drown out their voices. I remember the sound of striking flesh, how he hit her with insults that left bruises that hurt both inside and out. Mama’s arms were turning red and beginning to swell. He exploded in a fit of drunken rage; his punches were like exclamation marks at the end of his sentences.

I wished that I could save her, but I was afraid.

Locking herself in her room mother called for help, but help never arrived -- only a moving truck.

“Come on!” she orders, “we’re leaving,” dragging me and my sister out of our rooms with only a handful of our belongings.

The day I became and adult was when I was forced to choose the one I loved the most -- my mother or my father because I couldn’t have both.