A barely audible creak greeted me
As I entered a still unfamiliar home.
Then his figure approached, step by step;
Aged and wizened, unsteady at a walker.

Where it not for his gait and slouch,
He could have been any other.
Now he seemed so much smaller,
Not the monstrous terror of long ago.

There I stood, a deer in the spotlight,
Shaking off a child's phantom fright;
In the haze of ill-served remembrance
Realising that I loved him all along.