Absence Makes the Heart Grow, Father

I didn’t recognize the knock;
Funny how life trains you
In minutiae;

And you know, just know
Who it is

A quiet, tentative tap
Sinister and conspiratorial
Invoking fear and curiosity
Dream and nightmare

Peering through the frosted glass
At memory
Stooped and amorphous in an ill-fitted jacket
And bruised brogues
A waif, a bastard of the rolling years
Of all the terraced houses, in all the world,
He walks up to mine

I answered eventually, chain on,
Encountering two familiar blue grey eyes
Glazed over in versed clemency

His indelicate voice, when it finally broke,
Conveyed a bleached sentence,
Stopping my heart and
Racking up an abacus of sin

And, despite all my rehearsals
For this one very moment,
I unhooked the chain and took you in

But just the one chain
For now