Damage

To the house that I did not know, in the small town where my parents
had fled, and it was unkempt, flowering weeds, green tendrils, over the
breeze blocks of the unfinished rooms to the side.
The front looked out blindly, there was no-one watching me as I tried
the front door. Locked. Silent. Where is my dog? I asked myself, he
should have heard me. Barking, excited, his tail slapping against my
legs.

I walked around the house, the back garden was tended, potatoes,
cabbage, some flowers. I heard the faint sound of a radio, music
through the kitchen window, slightly open. I tapped gently at the door,
the curtain moving in the breeze or an unseen hand.

What would happen when they opened the door to me?
Would they welcome me back, my mother, my grandmother?
And what would my father do? Would he beat me as he used to or would he
be now, so changed, by all that had happened that he would no longer
have the heart for that? Or would he consider me now too grown, too
adult, his son who had gone off to the war, coming back with scars and
confusion to add to his own?

And my sister, did she still love me?
My brother, would he have forgiven me, for my desertion?

I waited, fingering the scars on my face, smoothed my hair.
But still no one came, the radio played on, I could hear the sound of a
newsreader intoning, could not make out the actual words but they
sounded drear, bleak.
I dropped my bag, my shoulders slumped as the weight fell away.
I would not break, I could not break, they must accept me back.

I stood, defeated, spoiled, as ruined as my country.
The door opens, light and warmth within, my grandmother on the step, my
sister takes my bag, my mother takes my hand.