'Everyone says
leave him with his father,
can’t take a child to live
in a country like that.'
'What!' we said.
'You’ve been
the one constant
in his life.
'In South-East Asia
they’ll love
you beautiful blondes.'
She took him.
Too admired,
they couldn’t go out,
got mobbed.
Came back here.
Now he’s teenaged
tall and lean, big-eyed.
She’s given him
stepfather, step-brothers.
The other day
he hit her.
[Poem #75]
PS (years later) that last was an isolated incident, I'm relieved to say.
This began as a game some bloggers played in 2008, to write about people who'd made an impact, in the same number of words as one's age, every day for a year. I did them less often and went on longer, adding one word each birthday. I stopped in 2016 and incorporated them into my main poetry blog. In 2019 I resumed the project and gave it its own blog again, with a new name, where it may unfold at its own (slow, intermittent) pace. I've labelled these verse portraits, but they're more like quick sketches: mere glimpses, impressions....
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