I would sit and listen to them back and forth
“What do you want for breakfast, dear?”
He would grunt an answer,
She would appear with a plate of badly burned eggs,
Dry toast, and old coffee:
“Is that all right, dear?”
Later her little boy would call
To tell me there was nothing to eat for dinner
We weren’t supposed to know she denied herself,
Denied her children,
Stood so straight she’d hope she’d disappear

We would bring
Stew,
Soup,
And his favourite: doughnuts,
Chocolate glazed,
The ones he loved best

His eyes would light up,
His hands, thin and transparent,
The blue of his veins showing
As they reached for the box

I would walk down those stairs
Knowing that, tomorrow,
I would find the box, still full,
Crumpled in the trash can
Away from her temptation
The chocolate glaze melted in the hot sun
Their little boy crouched nearby,
Forgetting his hunger

But for now, I would walk to the car
And hear the growling,
“Who was that?”
To which she’d reply,
“No one, dear.”

He pulls the trenchcoat of silence up around
his scraggy neck, his unshaven face making
scratching sounds against the fabric of his
denial; Furtively, he looks about, tension
pulsed in each movement: even his breath, heavy
with anxiety, is sweating as he tentatively tests his
surroundings, ever watchful for the enemy who can
appear in any shape, any form, any time, a once-friendly face
might turn traitor at any moment. He thought he had
counted the cost, but miscalculated: the price is too high,
his sanity has become his own ransom. He swallows down
the clench of the bile that rises, as he takes a halting step into the
too-bright glare of the afternoon sunshine.