13 May 2012
We went round to his house today,
It was empty yet again.
He'd gone out, yet again,
Forgetting we were coming.
He forgets everything these days.
His house is a shrine to the past.
Photos of all of us lining the walls,
Dusty old armchairs and an old-school phone,
The wire severed in his solitude.
Biscuit tins full of letters
And out of date tablets,
A ship without its bottle,
And a dappled mirror, showing me my soul,
Showing him a wrinkled shell
With a brain rotting away.
A part of the wall charts our histories
In lines and numbers,
From a foot above the skirting board
To six feet up the plaster,
Finger marks in the grime where he's retraced lives,
Wondering where it went wrong,
Where he went wrong,
Trying to find the line
At where he lost himself.
Gramps • Opuss № I