His parents had both been gone so long
He’d forgotten how they looked,
So gathered up all the photographs
And pasted them in a book,
Then hid the book until once a year
He would bring it out in the light,
And ruffle through all of its pages in
A memorial delight.
His wife said, ‘Why do you bother, Ken,
It will never bring them back,
It’s surely enough to remember when
You left, on a different track.’
Her own had consciously turned away
When she went and married Ken,
Had spurned her later advances and
She hadn’t seen them again.
‘I gave my family up for you,
But what did you do for me?
You tied me down with your family plan,
Locked me in your family tree!’
‘Was that so bad?’ And he looked quite sad
She revealed what he’d always known,
That she’d always hated his parents and
Would rather they’d lived alone.
‘What did they ever do to you,’ he said
‘To warrant your gall?’
‘They took away from my time with you,
With them, they wanted it all.’
‘They simply wanted the best for us
So they helped us out where they could.’
‘They kept on coming around,’ she said,
‘A great deal more than they should!’
One year, on opening up his book
There was more than a missing page,
With some of the photo’s gone for good
He was flung in a sullen rage.
‘What have you done with the photographs
Of the folks, there, back on the farm?’
‘You must have mislaid the things yourself…’
And he looked at her in alarm.
‘Have you gone really quite mad,’ he said,
‘Have you gone really insane?
Why would you take my memories
And cause me so much pain?’
‘They’re gone, they’re dead,’ she had screamed at him,
‘Yet you never let them be,
As long as you still remember them,
Then I will never be free!’
‘I thought that I’d seen the last of them
When I put your mother away,
And then, with only your father left
I made sure he choked that day!
I needed to get a new life for me
I need to be more than a wife…’
She hurriedly poured his soup for him
As he slowly picked up the knife.
David Lewis Paget