Shadow Boxing
‘When did you last see me’?
It was a Tuesday
I changed your diaper.....I can still smell your poop.
‘And then’?
You at four, your little hand tugging me into love.
At six, finger-painting;
my garish face splashed onto blank paper,
eye’s googly-bright like crazy suns.
‘I don't remember that’.
You at ten years old
when I dragged you to school
after the bullying.
‘Yea, you scared everyone’.
The long treks we took over moors and rocks.
Dawn til dusk, each trying to out distance the other,
until I would relent, and you would shrug
as if you were not even tired.
‘I wasn’t’.
Your sixteen-year-old smirk as you lied to me
about everything.
Your seventeen-year-old drugged isolation.
You, graduating inside of a camera I held up
to cover my face.
Saw you last, of course, at the airport,
it was a Wednesday.
‘Maybe I and the grandchildren will get
to America soon’.
Make it soon kid,
I’m running out of shadows.
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