We spent days together, mum,
when Dad was in his coma.
I thought of the blood about
to flood his brain,
as we sat on the sofa,
he moaned his fingers were tingling.
I thought about the early hours,
when he staggered passed me
in the hallway, looking drunk,
and I put it down to sharing the same
dramatic genes. The ones that usually kept
us at each other's throats.
And later when we sat as three;
broken by the first thread of news,
then given hope by the surgeon's knife.
Mum, the details you would never tell,
you fled in panic to the hospital;
a neighbour found the door
unlocked, the fire still on.
Instead of Dad I thought of you then,
quietly by his ear, as he drifted in and out of sleep.
And in recovery, the talks of life support,
for him or us?
We spent days together, mum.
But back then, it was my dad I saw before me,
tearful and weighing in at seven stone,
never the love of your life.
