The little boy made the house not empty.
Something his father did not know.
The walls made nasty noises. Like gutter creaks or ghosts.
He kept silent on the stairwell.
Figured quiet was a lesson to be learnt.
The second figure was stocky and red-headed. It all sounded like it hurt.
The secret came heavy, heaving.
Took the blue-gray curtains by their throat.
Stewed in the kettle and the doorways. Home was strange and without hope.
The existence of a something that had happened,
but could not ever be said
grasped after the boy with huge, wet hands, and would crawl into his bed.
Because the towels were soaked with the secret.
Warm porridge and buckets of rope.
It slid around him in the bath-tub, dirty water, legs covered in soap.
That slippery, slippery slope
of something that is not your own,
but buries its way into stiff phone calls with your mother
or girls you touch at twenty four.
There is nothing but its everything.
You remember what you saw.
Or its gaping absence in those nights,
acutely aware that nothing stirred.
There is nothing but its everything.
You remember what you heard.
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