Exile

Exile

Christmas morning 1995
about six months
into exile
still some hope
and a whole lot of love.

Delivery of presents
Santa myth trashed
for my children
not my design
against my will.

Got the okay to stop by
I step in from another world
bearing gifts
smiles to mask
my smashed heart.

Memory and dreams
this may pass
but the final statement
the final fuck off gesture
to me.

Proof that I was no longer real
I no longer belonged
was not that
I didn't get a gift
not a single one.

But when I asked her
she said she had
given him a shirt.

Black day
December 25 1995
I sucked it up
smiled at the kids
with holiday toys
tried to hide
my nightmare of pain.

Sat in my old spot
north side if the sofa
smiled a goodbye
and walked away into the bog
the moor
to Shadowville,
already dead inside
never to return.

-Will Dockery