Family Snap

There is a photograph your mother framed
And takes pride of place
Amidst her souvenir beachside bric-a-brac

You remember the day she took it
On her Hanimex point-n-click
In your driveway not wide enough for any car

It was morning,
The straggly lawn
Excreted its dew between your toes

He had screamed all night
In your arms and
Not in your arms

Bounced and rocked
And parked behind
The very row of bars

That had contained you
When so small, but
You don't remember the view from there

You don't remember the rooms
Filling with water
The passages listing
The impossible weight of the doors
The electric light flickering and giving in
The furniture in exodus, attempting the windows
The panicked pans and spoons following in stampede
You remember no pair of hands

No pair of hands,
No body lifting you and
Holding you to its chest
To dampen the screech of metal and wind
To throw open the doors to the deck
And cling to you so hard
You could feel your chest
Flowering like a life raft
And willing you both to jump

You don't remember,
By morning,
With the lawn lapping at your toes,

How long you and he
Had been there
When your mother,
With her Hanimex point-n-click,

Framed him in perfect sleep against your shirt
Your pensive face above him
In weary contemplation

#NaPoWriMo 2014 poem number 18