Daddy Left Last Night

Daddy left last night.
With thundering thoughts and mind in muddles,
Obligation in his suitcase.
Escorted down the dreary drive by vacant stares
Through gaps in shutters.
Broad shoulders disappeared - a stiff goodbye.

And mums eyes like tired pits.
Hands of misery dragging at her face and sunken cheeks.
She hauls her lead spirit behind her in a weighted cart with rusted wheels.
Blank eyes, frosted with futile tears
Roam the room at an audience of children gathered in solemn assembly.
Mother, a grave auditor, a narrator trying to mask a happy tone.
Her tongue is too tired to answer unspoken questions.
I am cold in her arms, her embrace is somewhere else.

Taunted by the hands of mocking clocks.
Unaccounted for hours measured in ticking torture.
Alone in a bed, a platform of wait,
For a husband's return and rantings subsided.
In the drudge of darkness, a lonesome cocoon spins around an aching heart.

And little children asleep with eyes open
In beds away away.
Thinking of a bedroom prisoner, in her chamber of fault.
Panting ears waiting for a latch to stir,
Angry at the gate that betrayed us all, giving no exit to my mothers pain.

A cold dent, an impression of one left home,
Just a ruffled reminder.
A dimple in her believing.

His illness too private for a mother of no understanding.
Tensions rolled up with a makeshift bed.
Angry eyes stomped past the kitchen widow, his sunken brow in heavy hang.
Knives and forks poised in tedious and cutting anticipation.
An entangled mind with messy wires, matrix of blame and fuses.
We tip-toe around bombs of silence and an absence I don't understand.

Daddy left last night.
He found himself another home and ruined ours.