Fathers & Sons Reprise

My father left a void in me

when he left.

-

I was barely old enough to walk

when he packed his cases before my eyes

and walked, willingly, into the dark outdoors.

-

Weekend visits were more often

Friday night disappointments,

or, at best, Sunday night ‘’til next week’ heartbreaks.

-

Small memories, mirror fragments.

-

the rough scratch of stubble

a silly voice

late to pick me up from work

overtime, more overtime,

slowly mounting debt

like black water around the neck.

-

Saturday mornings, my LEGO splayed across the hallway, a distraction

you falling asleep and forgetting to make dinner,

action movies past 11,

your silhouette,

a hole in the wall,

a broken fan, sharp plastic fragments

just beside

a head, cracked open,

rushing to the hospital

saying goodbye

one more time

not even knowing it was

the last.

-

The screaming, the pain I never understood,

too young to understand and too afraid to enquire,

-

situations dire, you didn’t wave, the long goodbye leaking from your four distanced screeching tyres.

------------------------------------------------------

She asks me if I want children

and the sanitised room swallows me whole.

-

At first, I just refuse to answer, pretending I was listening to the sound of cars outside.

-

But her persistence pours water on the wilting weeds which I’ve held onto,

and I snap back saying ‘Never.’

and watch as my pains duplicate,

their roots gripping more tightly

than ever before.

-

I remove myself from the family portrait,

aware that that’s just what men do.

-

I see my younger brother

learn the same melancholy that I did,

another deadbeat father,

another root snapped and removed,

the thorns making my hands bleed

blood which just won’t wash away.

-

Cinematic images:

a cowboy, bleeding to death,

saying ‘it’s alright, I’ve had my time.’

-

Another man, modern now,

drunk and violent, venomous spit.

A pile of tangled limbs, track marks

decorating pale arms.

-

How does a boy learn what makes a man?

-

It isn’t clothes, or a job, or the music you listen to

because if it was, I’d already be a lost cause.

-

‘A lasting place’, the poets say,

but it’s a bitter pill to swallow.

-

If a man is a permanent fixture

it would mean I’ve never known one

and that I’m adrift in a sea

distanced from any desert.

-

I look at my hands and think, once again,

of the violence that created them,

and pledge not to let the cycle repeat

silently aware that my father did the same,

that the world smothered his joy

until he was defeated.