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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book... “Embracing Shadows” Down in the Dirt, v146 (the June 2017 Issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

Order this writing in the issue book Random Thoughts the Down in the Dirt July-Dec. 2016 collection book		get the 418 page May-August 2017 Down in the Dirt issue anthology 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Order this writing in the book Negative Space (the 2017 poetry, flash fiction & art collection anthology)		get the 298 page poem, flash fiction & art collection anthology as a 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

The Basement

Patricia Ljutic

    She managed a particular trick to survive the basement. Her back against the cool wall, the one behind the boxes they had never unpacked, she split and plead with the bad-half of herself not to make her father mad. Later as the hours passed—the best days were when they left her there and no one ordered her upstairs—she’d conjure a world beginning with a book she’d read or a favorite television show.
    In the world she created in the basement she became part of a group of kids or a family that cared for each other. She dissolved the walls of the basement, left the dank, mildew smells, interrupted the darkness; she bathed on a beach in sunlight or sat at a picnic table biting into a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that clung to her smile. How good the peanut butter felt against her gums and lips; how silly. There, she felt free to participate in the nurturing tones and childish giggles that chimed from the tables of other families. She preferred it there, where no one called her bitch.
    She would forget the things she did in the basement: her isolation; the girl with the frizzy hair, two dresses, one pair of jeans and not the right shoes. The girl with the father who erupted against the injustices of the world, the tether of fatherhood, the puddle of lost dreams, so murky she never knew what he dreamt. Only what he didn’t want.
    Years after she forgot the basement she put herself through community college, saved for a bachelor degree—borrowed only 5,000 dollars—married a man who told her he would not waste his life matching pairs of socks. She raised two children and earn a graduate degree.
    Once her father could no longer care for himself she took him in. On his good days, he still told her about how they drove her home from the hospital and she never stopped wailing. She cried day and night, gave her mother a nervous breakdown. Jabbing his finger at her, he’d say, “I showed you who was in charge of my house. From then on you stayed awake during the day and slept all night.”
     She barely heard him when he spoke. She felt surprised at how hard she cried when he died.
    She never realized that she held her breath whenever anyone raised their voice. She never had a group of friends, just a few individuals who suspected she never really shared with them. After her daughter graduated from Berkeley, she moved to California where there are no basements and nothing to forget.

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