Hide and Seek

When you were kids, I’d hear you
playing upstairs – music blaring;
ballerinas, you’d be, in Swan Lake...
Murder in the Dark – your favourite,
but I banned it...too noisy by far.
Speedily replaced by Hide and Seek...
you’d be creeping downstairs...
avoiding the fourth from the top;
prone to squeaking, as it was. Then,
there was your sister, counting...one,
two, three seconds, at a hell of a lick.

‘Coming ready or not!’ she’d yell.
You used to say she was a cheat
for going too fast. She looks for you,
still...counting one, two, three, four
long years, and going strong. This
has to be your final game, as through
her fingers she is tempted to peek.
She never will, though, I know...
she’d rather go on kidding herself...
instead, chooses to believe you’ve just
‘slipped away’, and perhaps, one day,
she’ll find you, in that ‘other room’.