"I MET OZZY OSBOURNE LAST NIGHT" - Kayla Sargeson
I know I should lock the door, but
I’m not afraid,
not since I saw my stepdad
choke my sister one Christmas
(I really couldn’t breathe, she said later,
I thought I was going to die)
while our mother, drunk, watched.
Sixteen, I knew nothing about
how love and need can meet
and turn a mother into a dust
drunk by eight pm,
no exceptions.
I open my apartment door to find
Ozzy sitting on the floor of my four-room apartment
holding a ball of yarn over the head
of my cat.
I named my cat Ozzy after him
because I wish we were blood,
that our family trees shared
acid tripping, bat biting, pot smoking
ancestors. And I’m spinning
from the beer I drank with my friend Louis
before I discovered in my apartment
the Prince of Fucking Darkness,
the man who sang me to sleep over my teenage
Wal-Mart stereo while my mom and stepdad
fucked across the hall.
Kayla Sargeson is the featured reader tonight at Word of Mouth, 8 pm upstairs at The Globe.
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