Teddy

Teddy

 

you inhabit my earliest memories, Teddy:

an echo of solace and reassurance

 

like me,

you came into the world naked;

wrapped now in the red granny knitted for you

to cover up a shame you never felt,

unlike me

 

and as our realm filled with adventure you became

a viking warrior,

a pirate slave,

a tyrant king,

a crusher of worlds,

ripe with promise

 

then i embarked on more solitary escapades;

you heard me rehearse macduff, falstaff, the player king,

still searching for some higher self,

yearning for the less mundane

 

you heard the awed confession of my first kiss

and lay awake with me as it played like a fugue in my mind.

but later, when she left, somehow you could not fill the void;

i needed more than your silence to speak

to my stories of unrequited love.

do you remember all their names, Teddy?

When the last notes from my guitar begin to fade,

do their sombre spectres linger in your darkness too?

 

and when i left home, you joined me –

our lives so intertwined, how could you not?

but for years you never left that box,

faithfully stowed in a dozen dusty cupboards

in a dozen lonely rooms.

 

it may be that, dimly through the dark,

you heard me break apart

and find a way to reconstruct

my

Self

a sort of self-mending humpty dumpty,

never quite finding all the pieces

 

and now you sit in my boy’s toybox,

lost amid a clutter of broken cars and abandoned kittens;

i had hoped that he would find a way to love you,

that perhaps he, too, might find comfort in clinging,

but it seems he never will

 

perhaps he knows what i never did, Teddy:

that there is neither warmth nor ease in all our yesterdays;

and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

will be filled with sound and fury, signifying nothing

 

perhaps he sees you like i never could, Teddy;

perhaps he turns away because he cannot bear

to see the universe stare back with impassive button eyes