I live through a cage
Of numbed skin.
The past has made me so.
My emotions, blocked.
Tragedy, blocked.
I am a shoulder. 
I am a hug.
I am a smile.
You have made me so.

Your seventh age has come. 
Bleak and melancholy
Quietly, you went.
Softly.
I imagine
I can only imagine
On your own sofa.
A sofa that was once ours.
Ours.
Now yours.

Once yours. 
Surrounded by no-one.
Loved by no-one
But those who you betrayed. 
Cold.
That is how I imagine the scene – 

Cold. 
Alone.

Your beard long and greying,
Your stomach thin –  
Your mind 

far away.

Left behind.
I barely remember you.
The way things were. 
How things used to be.
All I feel is your cold,
the world of ice that
You left behind.
A snowball of hard rock

Smashing ice-
Knives in our backs

Your godmother crying
Falling to pieces as
Your coffin slid            away
The family cannot hold
Free-falling falcons
They didn’t tell her at first
She was left to fall in the dark
Just as you were
A child, at heart
Impressionable
Fallen
Naïve
But you were our father.

You were my father.
Remember that.

I remember. 

– cursed name
Alien name – 

Though it seemed
That you did not.
That they did not.
Hiding smiles of
Alcohol as
Your cold
Corpse
Slid

away

I feel no loss.
I feel no pain 
For all of you
Still lives within
Us. 
Talking to you
(In dreams.
In visions.
Conversations 
That nights never let
Die)
For best, 
For worst.
We were yours, once.
And you were mine. 

Alexander Stephenson