Like most of us, I can’t remember how I was separated from my first love. (Did it die, did I break it, was it stolen Or did it fly out through the open window?) I didn’t have radio-tuning parents Who filled the house with music Or instilled in me “a love of the cinema”. I never recalled my mother coming home From the hairdressers’ with a new hairdo Or father teaching me fishing, or Staying up to watch football on TV. He did once bring a kite home but hung it On my bedroom wall (he turned it into A portrait, it wasn’t his fault the wall Never became more of a sky). Meanwhile Cousins came for visits wearing braces
And chattering about comics, bicycle scars, And camping out, ghost stories (don’t tell That one, tell the one where Daddy used The torchlight and Mummy screamed and dropped Her things and laughed like a hyena). We drank Boiled water in the house, and sometimes Waking up from a nap I would wander the rooms To find mother copying cross-stitch designs From a book or father watching a subtitled Chinese re-run. So I slept again, dreaming Of playing toys away from the sunlight That leaked in between hawk-eyed curtains Gold-plating afternoon dust to shining pollen. When I awoke I was twenty, being asked If I had a happy childhood. Yes, the one We all have: filled to the brim With the love of absent things.
