He is thirteen, maybe
fourteen that day.
They are on
the street.
His mother stops
to talk to a man
then turns
to him.
“Do you know
who this is?
This is
your father.”
And the father
gruff and embarrassed
says
“I hear you’re not behaving”
He replies
“Who are you?”
With all the withering scorn
of the unloved
years.
A decade later
he asks her
“What was he like?”
And she tells him
how she was young and pretty
with prospects,
and how
he turned her head.
Meeting him
ruined everything.
She says,
“I wish I never
laid eyes on him.”
And doesn’t know
she is saying
she wishes
he was never born.
