On Not Being Adult

There is a crucial point of engagement

I haven’t perfected.

The characters flake-up.

I am typing ‘friends’

‘Memory’

This is my story

I sit in silence

 I have something to make

They have ascribed my sentence, ‘writer’

Downstairs a ‘mother’ in role,

In grievance,

Shakes

‘Daughter’  and looks

Into the fire.

In flames

We see the possibility of removal,

She exhumed to grandmother instead

Thinking of the adult hunched over typeface, larger

Than ten year old she tucked in the same  bed.

She does not read the words, only looks

At lines as if they present a path

The grandparents ease the phrase of self-absorbed

Over the television’s canning laugh.

For their idea of definition  

The possibility still in hands

Is for ‘work’ to making a living

And yet I adopted the typist’s stance.

The lowering of the gaze, prepared

That to the old I shall never make a life

Answer to the pine of my own wrists

When all they want is space to cry

You've made it

When I lose the art of pretending, faking

Curl my mouth

And feel it – ache.

We throw nouns around

Like we know where.

I suppose you’ve done it too

Bursting into tears still in the stairs

Of your family home

Now just a house on an avenue.

Parts returned, but nothing there.

And in the night you lie alone

Note the space your palm occupies

Open, on the pillow

Caching cold

The look you will never see

In your own eyes