I am the man who swallowed the boy.

I am the man who swallowed the boy,
who grew like a shell to surround the boy,
digested the bones and the brunt of the boy,
absorbed him into my growing self,
grew proud of the fact that I once was he.

I am the man who buried the boy,
at first in fun on a sandy beach,
then up to his neck in mores set like stone
with his bones slipping out of my reach -
which suited me down to the burial ground.

I am the shadow writ large of the boy,
taking the form of a palimpsest,
scraping away many layers of paint
to uncover the long lost shape of the boy
shaping this world of regret for the boy.

I am a masquerade of the boy,
the mask that I wear I took from the boy
to tackle the roles of all I could be -
but lacking his brio, unable to see
that all I pretend to is over-contrived.

Not the ghost of the boy - still wholly himself,
alive and well in the palimpsest -
but the ghost of myself is haunting me.
As a corpse the boy might have lived for ever,
but now that I've woken him... Never, oh, never!

---

Haiku #39

Dress code compliant
bare feet and night attire -
the supermarket run

(A bit behind times with this one, but it had to wait its turn.)