With or without you, the boat comes home,
Upturned faces on the dock - split into smiles, smeared with tears.
Bones washed up on the beach, picked clean.
Bits of wreckage.
Mum and Dad are dead now,
still looking out for you,
up and down the street.
If you came home, they wouldn’t recognise you.
You came home and they didn’t know you at all.
With or without you,
the boat comes home
without you.
© Kathleen Ahearne
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