Michael - The Lost Son Poem by Kevin Patrick II

She still cries for you, you know
Pouring tears in her wounds
when she's fast a sleep
Lost in the boarders of dream and death
Where the sandman at the toll booth
collects realities dues
Your their alive in bubble of serenity
solid as a glass reflection
a phantom limb of life
shimmering within a history
That never truly was



I can just imagine what you looked like
your fathers broad shoulders
a solid 6 feet high,
By the time you were in your teens
You have his heavy brow and her dour grey eyesSandy blond hair that went darkWhen you grew into your bodyYour a connoisseur of wit and intelligencewith decades of Glovers resentments
masked in a PhD of sarcasmputting band aids of humor
Born from a childhood of trauma
You might have gone to collegeMaybe followed your fatherInto businessor maybe you went into computer science
Or went into retail, in jobs just to survive
Maybe become a musician with
The arts in your blood
Who knows? the roads were blocked
You carried the gene of self destruction
A Recovering alcoholic like the rest
You struggled with mental health
That British keep calm
Counter to the Irish rageathon
Mental illness would have occurred somewhere
A case of adhd or dyslexia
Something to give your identity a kink
Who knows if you would be married
Your siblings struggled with that
You'd have had kids,
A common law partner
That would have met a common end
Of cheating and betrayal
You would have had brief moments of happiness
Followed by long periods of grief and woe
You would have growing bitter
With your parents,
A father who was never there
And a mother who wishes she wasn't
Would you have been submissive to your sisters?
Maybe, maybe not?
Odds are you would be an isolationist
Learning to like your own company
Just like the rest of your family.


But we don't know any of that
Because it never happened
You were taken
when your first breath
Was drawn as your last
And your didn't have time
To see the colors form
Or hear the sounds of life
When your cradle became a tomb
You have always been the ghost
Hidden in the closet
Remembered only as an echo
Your the face missing
in the family photographs
And the pages of photo albums
The space of emptiness
in thanks givens and Christmases
With a chair that's missing your name
Your the lost presence of birthdays,
weddings and graduations
Capturing milestones that never were
Your the missing voice of laughter
When bad jokes were made
And the shadow wrath of anger
When family fights were played
You didn't get to travel or move and see the world
Spent the summers at the cottage
Or moan when winter came
You never had to grow old or fear death
Because you met it from the start
Now there is a canyon so vast of history
It makes the Mariana trench
Look like a peep hole
In comparison to the absence of a life.
Years, decades, centuries lost
With a silhouette existence
With a hole shaped you.


Your just a dream now, a fiction once flesh
A piece of a puzzle never fully complete
A son born as our holy ghost
Forever a mirage