Gone

Ordinarily I would be annoyed.
Toys scattered throughout the house.
Pajama bottoms in the toy box
They have been unmoved for over a week now
And I find myself staring at them
Waiting for him to come along and pick one up to play


Long before this I was accused of being too attached
And I'm sure it's true, I am too attached
He is the child of my child
He should not be a part of my everyday
of my every thought
But he is


And now he is gone


That sounds so permanent, so final,..so dramatic


He is only gone from our home
from our lives
stolen away by a mother who hasn't given him more
than a handful of days in the last year
and not many more in the year before that


She doesn't know that he has bad dreams about spiders
or that when he hears my keys he comes racing out to
kiss me goodbye


She doesn't know that he likes to climb into bed with his dad
and snuggle each morning


She only knows that she wanted him back
so she took him
not caring if it hurt him or anyone else


And it did


As a family we are heartbroken
his dad, his grandfather and I


In my dreams I hear him crying for his daddy
I see him rolling on the floor the way he does when he's upset
I can feel him confused and hurting
missing the everything he's ever know


At night I still listen for him
When I'm having coffee in the morning I find
myself waiting for him to come down the hall and
say good morning


He's here, everywhere
and gone all the same