Rounding the corner,

The house seems unchanged,

Even those curtains I’d hated

I am now grateful to see.

 

I feel I could continue

down the path

Put the key in

Yale, worn brass, familiar

Turn…

- funny, how each lock has its own feel –

And open the door into a life that was.

 

Children torn from play,

A smile through the banisters,

Daddy’s home.

Tumbled halfway hugs,

Then short legs climb at speed 

back to books or Lego.

 

An evening meal shared

accounts of parent-teacher talk,

school trips, sponsored silences,

count-downs to holidays,

the in-jokes of family banter,

of home.

 

I stand too long:

Out,

like the sorest of thumbs

in the middle of what was once

Our street.

then turn away from the stare of a stranger

at the downstairs window,

just as I did

on the day I left.