Full Circle
my closet
is bigger
than the room
i grew up in
a room that
belonged to a boy
the other to his brother
it was never meant
for me
i always knew that
i remembered
a bigger room
with a hardwood floor
and it was upstairs
with a window
that overlooked the woods
and you could watch the snow fall
the leaves change color
and there was a pond nearby
that i’d skate on in the winter
it’s funny what you remember
what you can’t forget
a white two-story house
with a For Sale sign in the yard
getting on a plane
and leaving the only home i knew
looking for a house
in the Deep South
and she picked the one
near a family of four
a mom, a dad and two boys
none of us kids
knew what was happening
it happened so fast
one minute we’re moved into the house
next door
to the family of four
the next minute
they’re moving out
and we’re moving in
but the father stayed
a man i didn’t know
i already had a father, an adoptive father
he was up North selling the house
and then suddenly he was there
crying
i had never seen him cry before
but he was crying all the time
he went to court for custody
but lost
and one day, when i was 8, he sat me down
and told me he had to go away
and start his life all over
so, he left me
there
in a room
that was never meant
for me
and he never came back
but i never blamed him for that
‘cause i understood
he kept my pictures in a drawer
3 wallet-size laminated pictures
and when I saw those pictures in the drawer
after all those years
I knew he had never forgotten me
and when he died
I thought my life was over
I was so angry with God
hadn’t I done everything right
hadn’t I suffered enough
why would He take the one person
I loved the most
four years after he died
I got married
to a man my father would have loved
10 years after I married
we had a baby girl
had my father lived
I would have had a very different life
probably anchoring the news somewhere
in some big shot city
running here and there
ever searching for the life
I have right now
TL